Tourniquet
by Veruka
Summary: An extremely disturbed student transfers to Hogwarts in the middle of Draco's fifth year, and develops an unhealthy obsession with a professor. Now AU, and on hiatus indefinitely.
1. Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here...

**Tourniquet**  
by Veruka

Disclaimer: All characters/concepts with the exception of the rapacious Gwendolyn Cross and her family are property J.K. Rowling. No © infringement intended. No money.

Notes: First and foremost, I wrote this on a whim for my own personal enjoyment (and Faith's), and decided to post it out of morbid curiosity to see if other, less biased folk would dismiss it as a piece of shite. It's part self-insertion (and blatant fantasising), part perverse experiment, and deals with mental illness, masochism, sadism, blood, pain, and all sorts of other unpleasant things, so sensitive and/or squeamish readers take heed.

* * *

**Part 1 - Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here...**

If anything can be said for foreshadowing, the mid-November weather was grisly the night she arrived, cold and dismal. Rain and snow fell simultaneously from the sky in sheets of soggy ice that turned the grounds into freezing mud. A person would have to be out of their mind to travel by broomstick in such weather -- which was the precise opinion of all but one of the faculty members of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, of the drenched young girl holding a broomstick, standing in the headmaster's office.

"You flew in?" McGonagall had asked her incredulously upon meeting her in the school's massive Entrance Hall. "Are you mad? You must be frozen!"

"I enjoy the cold," the girl had said simply, though she took the blanket the deputy headmistress had conjured for her and wrapped it around her shoulders loosely.

"And your parents consented to your turning yourself into an ice sculpture?"

"My parents have always allowed me my freedoms."

McGonagall had made a small sound of disapproval, and they walked in silence until reaching a very ugly stone gargoyle. "Pumpkin pasty," she told it, and the gargoyle sprang aside as the wall behind it split in two, revealing a spiralling staircase with steps that moved continuously upward. Ten minutes of waiting later, and they found themselves in Dumbledore's office.

"Miss Cross, I presume?" he asked, and the girl nodded once. "Welcome to Hogwarts. I'm Professor Dumbledore, headmaster of the school, and may I introduce professors Flitwick, Sprout, Snape, and you've already met Professor McGonagall," he said, gesturing at each of the four other adults in the room in turn. The girl looked each of them over at length. Professor Flitwick couldn't have been more than four feet tall, though his face was old and kind, like the headmaster's. Sprout was a short, plump, and pleasant-looking witch, while Snape appeared to be the exact opposite: Tall, thin, and male, with a hard glare embedded into his features. McGonagall looked just as stern as he did, but there was a softness in her eyes that betrayed that severity.

Dumbledore glanced down at a piece of parchment on his huge, claw-footed desk. "Ah, yes, everything seems to be in order..." he mumbled to himself, then looked up at McGonagall. "Minerva, the Sorting Hat, please."

McGonagall rose and retrieved the battered, ancient pointed hat from its stand and placed it on the girl's head. "Every Hogwarts student must be sorted into one of four Houses," Dumbledore explained as the hat sat quietly. After a few moments, a flap on its brim opened to speak loudly, "Slytherin!" The girl didn't seem to be affected much by this information, and Dumbledore gave her a small smile with a curious twinkle in his eye before nodding in approval.

"Slytherin House is to be like your family while you're at Hogwarts," he said. "Professor Snape is your Head of House. He will show you to your dormitory. We received your things earlier today; they've already been taken up to your room. Oh, and we mustn't forget this..." He handed her a small cream-coloured card. "Your class schedule. You'll be needing that, I think."

She thanked him quietly, and Snape stood and started for the door. "Come with me," he snapped, and she followed without a word as he led her back down the spiralling staircase.

Snape watched the girl out of the corner of his eye as they walked. She was managing to keep pace with him, probably due the fact that she was quite tall for her age, about five-foot-nine. Tall, yes, but not particularly healthy-looking. Wrapped in her dripping black cloak and the grey blanket McGonagall had given her, she looked washed-out and pale, possibly even paler than him, and even bundled up as she was he could tell that she was far too skinny for her height, though from what he knew, her family was far from impoverished: Her father, Stephen Cross, had acquired a position with England's Ministry of Magic as an Unspeakable -- a lucrative, if secretive, job -- and had relocated his family from America to London, thus forcing his daughter and only child Gwendolyn, age sixteen, to transfer from Asgarth Preparatory Academy of Magic in New York to Hogwarts, and consequently, into Slytherin House.

At last they reached the depths of the dungeon corridors, stopping at a stretch of stone wall near the end of one especially long hallway. "Cruciatus," Snape hissed, and the door hidden within the wall slid open. He turned to Gwendolyn. "Don't forget the password. It changes every week. The prefects will keep you informed. Your dormitory is down the left stairwell, second level, dorm C. Breakfast begins at eight in the Great Hall. Classes begin at nine. Understood?"

She nodded once and gave him an almost inaudible "Thank you." Snape spun on his heel and started back down the hall, his robes billowing out behind him. "Oh, professor," she called softly after him, and he turned to face her questioningly as she pulled a slightly damp envelope from one pocket of her robes. "Could you please tell me where the owlery is located? I need to send this off to my parents to let them know I've arrived."

Snape gave her a look that said without words, "You couldn't have mentioned this _before_ we came all the way down to the dungeons?" Still, he stepped forward and held out his hand. "Give it to me. I'll make sure it gets sent." She did, and after a curt nod of goodnight, he was off again.

Gwendolyn stared after him for a couple of moments, then turned and entered the Slytherin common room. Rough stone made up nearly the entire room; the only light came from dim greenish lamps hanging by chains from the ceiling, and a crackling fire in an elaborately carved stone fireplace. A few large green and silver rugs covered the floor in front of the fireplace, and on them sat about half a dozen high-backed chairs, all of which were filled by older students with their faces buried in books -- probably seventh-years studying for their N.E.W.T.s. On either side of the half-circle of chairs there were Victorian-style sofas, both made of ebony and upholstered in black leather. A good portion of the walls were covered by tapestries, also green and embroidered with silver snakes.

A group of girls that had been talking quietly on one of the sofas glanced up at the new arrival. One of them, a pug-faced girl with mean brown eyes in the centre of the group, obviously their leader, looked Gwendolyn over with a scrutinising sneer. "Look what the kitty dragged in," she whispered to the others, who giggled maliciously. She rose and sauntered over, and the group followed her obediently. "You must be the new girl," she said, and did not offer her hand for Gwendolyn to shake. "I'm Pansy Parkinson. This is Blaise Zabini;" she nodded over her shoulder to a smirking girl with red hair, "Tracey Davis;" another nod, this time toward a fairly tall girl with bird-like features, "and Constance Greengrass." Constance was a small, dark-haired girl with wide brown eyes and flushed cheeks. She seemed the most timid of the group, but was trying hard to form a nasty curl to her lips. "What's your name?"

"Gwendolyn Cross," the latest Slytherin said shortly, and Pansy's eyes narrowed a bit.

"You're American?" she said, more of a demand than a question. Gwendolyn's stoic features didn't so much as flich.

"Yes."

"You're very quiet," Blaise commented suspiciously. "You're not...one of _them_, are you?" "One of whom?" "A Mudblood," Pansy explained. "You know, Muggle-born, impure, not of true wizarding heritage."

"Yes, I'm aware of what a Mudblood is -- and no. I'm pure-blood." The statement wasn't quite impressive enough to appease them, until she added, "I was under the impression that Salazar Slytherin didn't allow Muggle-born filth into his House."

The girls stared at her as though they could dissect her with their eyes, and after a short bit, Pansy broke out into a wicked grin.

"You're all right, Gwendolyn Cross," she nodded approvingly. "Come on, you're sharing a dorm with us. Your things have been in there since dinner. You'll probably want to change into clothes that...make you look less drowned."

"Lovely," Gwendolyn muttered, and followed the catty group down the left stairwell, second level, dorm C, just as Snape had said. Sure enough, her large trunk rested at the foot of an empty four-poster bed. It, too, was outfitted entirely in green and silver. On top of the trunk sat an empty black basket with its lid off, and Gwendolyn looked curiously at Pansy.

"Oh, we let her out to get her used to the place. She was yowling like mad to be free. Pretty thing, she is. What do you call her?"

"Morgaine," Gwendolyn said, and at the sound of its name, a pretty, sleek black cat emerged from beneath the bed and rubbed against its mistress's wet robes. She picked it up and scratched it affectionately, and was awarded with a pleased purr from the feline before it was set down on top of the bed so Gwendolyn could open up her trunk to retrieve her nightdress. As she began to undress, the other girls dispersed and returned to their previous conversation, something about a Quidditch match against Ravenclaw, and how there was no way a Chang was going to beat a Malfoy at getting the Snitch. Gwendolyn ignored them for the most part and pulled on the short black chemise she always slept in, then slipped beneath the covers of her massive new bed.

"You're not going to sleep, are you?" Pansy asked. "It's early yet."

The redheaded girl -- Blaise -- saved Gwendolyn from replying. "She's probably tired from her trip, Pansy. Let her rest. You can grill her tomorrow."

Pansy frowned, but didn't argue, and the new girl pulled the curtains shut around the bed and closed her eyes, though she knew that sleep would take its time in visiting her. Morgaine curled up comfortably at her feet, and her mind drifted briefly back to Professor Snape. He was so odd-looking, with his hooked nose and greasy hair, thin frame, and those inky black eyes...

Yes, she decided she was especially fond of his eyes. She pictured his pale, skeletal form cloaked in black robes, like Death himself leading her down into the depths of the castle dungeons. Gwendolyn had always had a penchant for Death.

She'd always been a strange girl, in the eyes of others, at least. The words 'eerie' and 'creepy' could often be found strung in sentences concerning her, though she had never paid much attention to these or any opinions of herself other than her own, whether they be about her appearance or state of mind, both of which were a touch...abnormal, to say the least.

"What have you been feeding this child?" her Aunt Alverda had often demanded of her parents, shaking Gwendolyn's frail wrist in her hand. "She's nothing but skin and bone!"

"We feed her plenty," her mother had responded -- she'd never been too fond of Aunt Alverda. "She's just picky."

"You need to eat more, girl," her aunt still kept on. "You'd be very attractive if you only had some meat on your bones."

Gwendolyn, of course, ignored her. She was perfectly content with her appearance, and wasn't about to trust the judgment of a woman who considered pink chiffon robes to be the height of magical fashion.

From beyond the bed curtains, she heard Pansy and her flock of followers burst into a fit of giggles, and rolled her eyes. One thing that she would apparently never escape, despite now being in an older and supposedly classier country -- teenagers who acted their age. Oh, she was all for getting good and unbecomingly smashed when the occasion called for it, but acting like an utter goose incessantly? She would never understand the appeal. Another gripe of her Aunt Alverda's when she had been young: "Why does the child never smile? What possible reason does she have to always look so unhappy?" And once again, her mother would give an exasperated reply: "She's a very intelligent girl, Alverda. I think she's simply too logical to find humour in the mundane. She takes after her father in that respect."

"Stephen was quite playful as a child!" her aunt would persist.

"Gwendolyn plays," her mother argued. "Why, just yesterday I looked in on her having a tea party with an imaginary friend. She's very creative, just...serious."

Imaginary friend, indeed. Perhaps imaginary to them. To Gwendolyn he was very real, resplendent in his distinguished black robes, with his scythe resting regally against the table by his side like a staff. That had been his only visit to her, but it was more than enough to spark a lifelong infatuation. It was love at first sight.

She'd asked him politely, "If I am not to die soon, why have you come to visit me?" And Death had answered her, just as politely, "Because, my dear, you make excellent tea." It was a response that would make most people's brows furrow in bewilderment, but to Gwendolyn, it all seemed perfectly logical, cause and effect. She hadn't given it much thought at the time -- hadn't cared to, really. A very interesting man had come 'round to visit her, and had given her a compliment. It needed no more explanation than that.

Seeing Professor Snape that night had brought the memory back fresh in her mind. She'd never seen anyone that so resembled her childhood fascination, and had the presence to match. Snape was possessed of that same hushed, down-played exterior that deceived the tremendous authority, knowledge and power that was commanded within, and Gwendolyn was sure that, like Death, Snape's demeanour and treatment of others depended on how readily they accepted him for what he was. Death could be a violent, terrible, wrathful thing, but he could also be funny, ironic, and even downright pleasant, if one knew when to protest and when to yield. She had an inkling that Snape could be just the same -- all she had to do was be logical about him.

The fleeting mental image of his face had brought forth nearly two hours of contemplation, and Gwendolyn found herself sinking into a pleasant half-dream of random glimpses of her unconscious. She had just begun to boil the Potions master in a kettle of tea when at last she drifted off, and the picture faded to black.

* * *

She was awoken by a sharp nudge to her left shoulder, and sat bolt upright in bed, causing whomever had been prodding her to let out a small, startled shriek. Gwendolyn turned her head to see Pansy standing next to her, one hand clutched tightly to her chest, looking alarmed.

"Bugger all, don't ever do that to me again!" she gasped out and lowered her hand, regaining her composure. Gwendolyn only looked at her quizzically. "I thought I'd wake you so you wouldn't miss breakfast," Pansy continued. "It's already ten to eight. I wasn't sure how long it takes you to get ready in the morning."

Gwendolyn rotated her neck, then twisted around to either side. A series of pops sounded from her back as her spine cracked from the lowest vertebrae up to the highest, and the other girl wrinkled her nose in distaste and shuddered.

"Ew. How do you do that?"

The newest Slytherin shrugged and arched her back forward, popping the last two joints easily. When she had finished, she turned back to Pansy. "Thank you."

"No problem," the pug-faced girl muttered, then left the room, shaking her head. Once she was gone, Gwendolyn rose, got out her toiletries from her trunk, and headed for the bathroom to wash up.

It took her a good half-hour to break free from the daze of early morning. She was a nocturnal creature at heart, and the only mornings worth being awake for, in her opinion, happened after she'd been awake for the whole of the previous night, or ones that began before the sun rose. It wasn't until she was mid-way through pulling her long, dark brown hair back into a French braid that her brain could be considered fully functional, and even then it was a bitter functional at best.

After dressing and giving Morgaine a good morning scratch on the neck, she checked the schedule Dumbledore had given her the night before. First period was History of Magic with Professor Binns, and following that, a twenty-minute break. Good. She would only need to cart the one textbook to breakfast, then.

Finding the Great Hall had been simple enough, as it was the most obvious room in the school with its enormous polished oak doors through which students and faculty alike were continuously swimming in and out of during that time of day. She stepped inside, and surveyed the scene with a calculating eye. The Great Hall was obviously called 'great' for a reason. Hogwarts in its entirety was truly grand, there was no denying that. Grander than Asgarth had been, certainly, with its Norse heritage and gruff wood-and-brick architecture. True, it was the oldest and most illustrious wizarding school in North America, but it lacked the opulence and atmosphere of Hogwarts, the almost tactile sensation of the past that seemed to float around the school like a warm blanket. It would probably have it even without the twenty or so ghosts hovering above the tables. One in particular, a gauntly-featured spectre with silver bloodstains covering his robes, caught her eye. Ooh, yes, she liked him. That was how a real ghost was meant to look -- frightening, foreboding. Just deadly glares and vicious scowls, none of that jolly laughter which was coming from a podgy, bald phantom who was conversing with a lanky-looking ghost with a thick ruff around his neck. They should've been ashamed of themselves.

Gwendolyn recognised the Slytherin table easily, and slid onto the bench next to Tracey and Constance, across from Pansy and Blaise. After taking a cranberry scone from one of the large plates that lined the middle of the table, she continued on with her inspection of the huge room while she covered the pastry with jam and cream. The table next to Slytherin was evidently reserved for Ravenclaw House, judging from the blue and bronze patches on the front of their robes. After them came the Hufflepuffs, yellow and black, and then finally the Gryffindors on the other side of the hall, scarlet and gold. She scanned the table for one individual in particular, and found him near the top end, flanked by a gangly redheaded boy and a haughty-looking girl with bushy brown hair.

The infamous Harry Potter in her very same school year. Fancy that. Though he wasn't much to look at -- she'd expected him to be taller somehow, less...well, mongish-looking. With his mass of untidy black hair, small frame, and round glasses, he hardly looked the part of the Dark wizard-defeating hero. She'd never thought much about him to begin with -- after all, she, too, had only been a year old when the boy wonder managed to half-kill the Darkest wizard of their age. 

Lord Voldemort was far less publicised in America, a bit like the worrying nuisance Hitler had been during the Muggle World War II before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and officially dragged the States into the conflict, though the Potter baby's thrashing of his powers had been considered internationally a bloody lucky miracle.

Yes, Gwendolyn knew Potter's name. No, she hadn't ever given him much thought, and she wasn't about to start now. She had far more interesting pursuits than a fortunate, rumpled, fifteen-year-old boy.

Her dull green gaze shifted to the exceedingly long High Table at the front of the room. Dumbledore sat in what appeared to be a highly structured throne in the centre of the table. Seated next to him was stern McGonagall, followed by a scruffy-looking man with sandy brown hair in battered robes. Next to him was nothing short of an absolute Ogre of a man with a thick, bristly beard, then a regal-looking black woman outfitted in robes of golden-yellow. Gwendolyn's eyes stopped at the person sitting dourly next to the black woman, and watched as Professor Snape mumbled responses to a witch in royal blue robes with spiky silvery hair who was speaking to him animatedly.

"Hey Gwen," Pansy interrupted her observations, "enlighten us: What magic schools do they have in America?"

"Gwendolyn," she corrected the other girl shortly. She had a given name and wasn't one for shortening it cutely. "Because America is so large, there are three schools: Asgarth Prep in New York, which I attended, the Salem Institute in Oregon, and Magia en la Pantano de la Cocodrilo Crespo somewhere in the South, I think either Texas or Mississippi. It's Spanish for Magic in the Swamp of the Fuzzy Crocodile. We didn't really associate with them much."

"What was your school like?" Tracey asked casually, trying not to appear too eager.

"Not like this," Gwendolyn said, her eyes raising to look at the mammoth arches of the ceiling. "It was more...ship-like. The Viking wizards who first settled there had a lot of nautical influence in their designs. This place is like a palace."

"Did you have Houses, like Hogwarts does?" Constance put in shyly.

"We did, named for the old ones of the Norse country. Odin, Heimdalr, Freyja, and Loki. There's no Sorting Hat, though. Instead, we had five fire goblets, four smaller ones surrounding one large one. The same sort of goblets that choose the most worthy contestants for the TriWizard Tournaments here in Europe. All the new students' names go into the centre goblet, and it chooses which House you belong in by spitting the names back out into the Houses' corresponding goblets. I was a Loki, naturally."

She didn't elaborate further, and Blaise looked like she was about to ask something more when Pansy spoke up with a syrupy smile.

"While I'm sure that this conversation is far more fascinating than anything Binns will have to say, we're going to be late if we don't hurry." She rose, and the others followed suit. Gwendolyn memorised which corridors they were taking as they went along, and was careful to keep an eye out for any trick steps. Back at Asgarth, one staircase in the Charms wing would begin to roll like a wave at random, while another near the Transfiguration room had a step that you had to skip, for the second you put a foot on it, it would turn liquid and you'd find yourself neck-deep in ice cold seawater.

"Binns is a boring old goat," Blaise whispered at her as the group entered the History of Magic classroom. "But not to worry -- the textbooks are nice and pillowy if you need a nap."

Gwendolyn found that they shared the class with the fifth-year Ravenclaws, all of whom regarded the new arrival with analytical looks. She took the third seat at Pansy and Blaise's table, while Constance and Tracey sat behind them with a large, heavily-jawed and dim-looking girl. To Gwendolyn's left was a table with three boys, two of which looked like trollspawn, and a pale, blond boy with pointed features who glanced at her snootily just as Professor Binns entered the classroom -- through the blackboard. She filed this spectral information away in her mind, and the ghost took attendance. He stopped when he got to her name and arched one translucent eyebrow.

"Ah, yes, Miss Cross," he droned. "We're in the middle of studying the evolution of the Ministry of Magic -- tell me, how far along had you gotten in your history class in America?"

"I left off on the North American branch-off of the Wizards' Council in the fourteenth century, sir," Gwendolyn answered, and Binns clicked his tongue.

"I see. Well, you're a bit behind, but judging from your previous marks in the class, I'm sure you'll catch up in no time."

She nodded, and the ghost began the day's lesson. Gwendolyn found that she wasn't too far in arrear, thankfully, and with a few notes was able to piece together what she had missed. All throughout the class, she noticed a steady succession of students wilting into their textbooks at the professor's monotonous lecturing. It seemed like everyone but herself had their eyelids drooping, but she found the way Binns conducted his class to be rather enjoyable -- simple outlining and storytelling, no random variables to keep track of. She absorbed it all like a sponge -- History of Magic had always been her best class. Yet another one of her 'quirks', preferring book learning to wand waving. Books were precise. They told you what you needed to know, no tricks, no foolishness, no frustration.

When the hour was up, the class filed lethargically out into the halls to do whatever it was they did during the break. Gwendolyn followed Pansy and the others back toward the Slytherin dormitories, more from a need for her Arithmancy book than any desire to further socialise with them. The blond boy with the pointed features and his trollspawn companions caught up to them.

"So you're the new girl," he drawled, looking her up and down. He was a slender boy, about her height, who appeared to have only three facial expressions -- a smirk, a sneer, and a bored glower. "My name's Malfoy." He offered her his hand, which she shook limply. "Draco Malfoy. This is Crabbe, and that's Goyle," he gestured to the two trollspawn, neither of which looked very talkative. Probably a blessing, if their appearances said anything of their intelligence. "You've been incorporated into Pansy's little gaggle, so I can assume your lineage is decent enough. You wouldn't believe the way that Sorting Hat malfunctions sometimes -- we've actually got two half-bloods in our House -- _two_! And after all that lyrical bollocks it sang about never being wrong....Well, at least they know their place and don't try to get in the way of their superiors." The boy's bluster finally died down, and then he added, almost as an afterthought, "Oh yeah -- what's your name?"

Gwendolyn told him, and he nodded as though he'd already known and had been testing her to see if she did.

"My father told me your father's a new Unspeakable in the Ministry. Has he ever told you what it is he does?"

Oh, honestly. "It's the oddest thing," she said dryly. "He's not supposed to talk about it."

"I might like to be an Unspeakable after I leave Hogwarts," Malfoy continued, oblivious to her sarcasm. "If only the Minister of Magic was someone more competent than that inept dunderhead Cornelius Fudge."

"Who would you prefer?" Gwendolyn asked, though she had a distinct feeling that she needn't encourage the boy for him to keep speaking.

"My father, of course. Lucius Malfoy. He's brilliant. Doesn't believe one lick in all the Muggle-loving nonsense that's going around these days. He'd sort the Ministry out right, get its priorities in order, make the wizarding world belong to the wizards again."

They reached the entrance wall to the Slytherin common room, and Blaise gave it the password. They went inside, and Gwendolyn decided that she was much beginning to enjoy Malfoy's company to that of the girls'. At least his arrogance was amusing.

"What sort of wand do you have?" he demanded, brandishing his own. "Mine's dragon heartstring, yew, thirteen inches."

Gwendolyn took out her wand and allowed him to examine it closely. "Dragon heartstring, mahogany, eleven inches."

Malfoy nodded approvingly, but Pansy wrinkled her nose.

"Isn't that a boy's wand?" she scoffed.

"No, it's my wand," Gwendolyn replied. Pansy seemed unfazed.

"My wand is rosewood," she said haughtily. "One unicorn tail hair, eight and one-half inches."

"That's a sissy wand," Malfoy snapped at her. "What's it good for, Cheering Charms?"

That seemed to take her down a couple of notches. She sniffed, turned her nose up in the air, and headed down to the dormitories. Malfoy returned Gwendolyn's wand and cocked his head at her curiously.

"What class do you have next?"

"Arithmancy," she told him, and he frowned.

"I've got Care of Magical Creatures with that savage oaf, Hagrid. He provoked a Hippogriff into attacking me once, you know. And then, when the Ministry members came to execute it, he deliberately let it escape! He should have been fired years and years ago. That's the only reason I still sign up for his class -- I think he's got something against me, and I'm going to prove it. He'll be out by the end of the year, I'll wager."

"How brave of you to make such sacrifices," Gwendolyn remarked mordantly. Malfoy again didn't seem to notice her tone.

"My parents send me a box of sweets every week," he said. "I think I've got some Cauldron Cakes left. Do you want one?"

Gwendolyn accepted the offer (the scone hadn't been very filling, and she was always hungriest in the mornings), and Malfoy headed down the right stairwell to the boys' dormitories. She took the opportunity to switch _A History of Magic_ for _Arithmancy: Magical Mathematics_ and _An Intermediate Guide to Transfiguration_. Pansy narrowed her eyes suspiciously when Gwendolyn entered the dorm. She was sitting on the new girl's bed, stroking Morgaine, who didn't look outstandingly pleased about the situation, but was keeping her mouth shut.

"Wow, you and Draco seem to be hitting it off really well," the pug-faced girl commented, trying to act casual but ending up contemptuous.

Gwendolyn looked at her sceptically. "If you say so," she said flippantly. "I've no interest in boys."

"What, are you a lesbian?"

"Perhaps you didn't hear me correctly -- I've no interest in _boys_. Take it however you wish."

Pansy's brow creased in bewilderment. "Whatever. So long as you know that Draco Malfoy is spoken for."

"Funny," Gwendolyn managed a smirk. "It seems to me that he can speak plenty for himself." She left the room without another word, and went to collect her Cauldron Cake.

* * *

Gwendolyn was pleased to find that she wasn't behind schedule in Transfiguration, and even a little ahead in Arithmancy, which was quite a relief, as it was her worst class and would have probably taken her the rest of the school year to catch up on. At lunch, she could barely bring herself to eat from anticipation of her next class -- double Potions with the Gryffindors. From what she had heard from Blaise, Professor Snape's was one of the most challenging courses in the school, and that he favoured the Slytherin students above all others, Malfoy most of all. Not that that mattered -- Gwendolyn wasn't concerned with winning over the professor's academic esteem. Her motives were rooted in a much more personal sphere of pursuit.

The Potions room was, aptly enough, located in the dungeons. The ghost she'd fancied at breakfast was gliding through the halls, and the cluster of students outside the classroom parted like the Red Sea to allow him to pass.

"That's the Bloody Baron," Malfoy hissed in her ear. "Supposedly he slaughtered a whole mess of Muggles in the twelfth century who wanted him hanged because they suspected he was a werewolf. It was a load of rubbish, of course, but he didn't like them tarnishing his reputation and whatnot. He didn't even use his wand to kill them -- just his sword -- and then bathed in their blood to boast of his victory. But one of the Muggles, an archer, had kept his distance from the mob, and after everyone was dead -- _snap_! He shot an arrow straight through the Baron's heart."

"How dreadful!" Gwendolyn exclaimed, the most emotional response anyone had yet to see from her. "The poor thing, no wonder he always looks so sour; his party was completely ruined!"

Malfoy frowned at her as though she were insane, and she looked at him forthrightly.

"Well, wouldn't _you_ be upset if you were shot through the heart right when the celebration began?"

"I suppose." He shrugged noncommittally just as Snape arrived to let everyone into the classroom. Crabbe and Goyle slumped down on Malfoy's left side. Gwendolyn took the seat to the blond boy's right, and caught Pansy glaring daggers at her. She stared back into the girl's mean brown eyes, keeping her own face blank and unwavering, until Pansy broke the contact and turned to mutter something scathing to Blaise, who glanced over, but didn't seem to give much of a damn about the seating arrangement.

Gwendolyn focused her attention toward the front of the room, where Snape was writing down the day's assignment on a blackboard. She watched his bony, long-fingered right hand as it formed the sharp edges and arcing curves of his handwriting, the sallow complexion of his skin contrasting with the pure white of the chalk and the black of his robes. His greasy black hair swung limply at his shoulders as he moved, always shadowing his face from her view when he glanced sideways at the open book on his desk.

At last he turned around to face the class, his black gaze scanning over the tables, first the Gryffindors, then the Slytherins. When it flickered over to her table, he fixed his eyes on Gwendolyn for one shrewd moment before continuing on down the line. He marked something down in his book -- most likely attendance -- and wasted no time in beginning the lesson.

"Copy the board. Partner up. Now," he barked, and Gwendolyn picked up her quill, dipped it in ink, and began to write.

_Wound-Cleaning Potion_

2 Abyssinian shrivelfigs (mashed)  
1 ounce bubotubors (finely cut)  
3 Opaleye dragon scales (whole)  
3 mole crickets (ground)

1. Place mashed shrivelfigs into cauldron. Bring to a boil.  
2. Add bubotubors, wait ninety seconds, add dragon scales. Allow to boil for fifteen minutes.  
3. Add ground mole crickets, bring solution down to a simmer for five minutes.  
4. Remove cauldron from flame and let potion steep for ten minutes. Strain mixture into phials, stir gently.

When she'd finished, Malfoy leaned toward her. "You're partnering with me," he ordered quietly. "I can't stand partnering with Crabbe or Goyle -- they always mess something up."

Gwendolyn nodded at him and began slicing up the bubotubors, while he started mashing up the shrivelfigs in a small ceramic mortar. Snape paced slowly through the aisles, on the look-out for errors. Out of the corner of her eye, Gwendolyn noticed Pansy looking at her fiercely again, and ignored her. Snape, however, did not.

"Parkinson," he snapped. "Stop scowling at Cross and concentrate on your work."

Pansy's face flushed crimson, and lowered her eyes gloweringly as she punched at her shrivelfigs with her pestle. Gwendolyn's eyes narrowed -- that was considered showing favour to Slytherin?

But then, she came to realise when Snape scolded a stout, round-faced Gryffindor boy called Longbottom, that 'favour' meant chastisement without the deduction of ten points from one's House.

Malfoy placed the shrivelfigs into the cauldron and lit a fire beneath it with a mutter and a slight wave of his wand. After a few minutes, the purple-brown sludge began to bubble profusely, and Gwendolyn added the bubotubor bits. Malfoy kept an eye on his watch, and dropped the iridescent dragon scales into the lumpy mixture precisely ninety seconds later. He kept track of the time while Gwendolyn tended to the mole crickets, which only took five minutes to grind sufficiently. She had just finished when Snape reached their table. He inspected Crabbe and Goyle's work first.

"The ingredients list says 'finely chopped', Goyle, not broken into four large blocks. You're making a potion, not your grandmother's cabbage stew."

A few of the Slytherins behind them sniggered. The Gryffindors were also smirking, though didn't dare make a sound unless they wanted to spend the rest of the week in detention. Snape himself gave Goyle a slippery-looking sneer before moving on to Malfoy and Gwendolyn, whose concoction he examined thoroughly before bestowing a nod of positive appraisal.

"Excellent work, Mr. Malfoy, Miss Cross," he said silkily, and Malfoy beamed proudly.

"If you don't mind my asking, sir," the boy enquired, "how are we meant to test this potion to see that it works properly if none of us have any open wounds?"

Snape was about to answer when Gwendolyn looked at Malfoy, picked up the knife she'd use to slice up the bubotubors, cut a long, semi-deep gash into the palm of her left hand, and rested it lesion-up on the table in front of him. His grey eyes widened at her in disbelief, and even Snape's brow was knitted like he was looking at a madwoman.

"For Merlin's sake, girl, I was just going to say that a simple pinprick would have done for a demonstration!" 

She stared up at him, unblinking, and said nothing. Snape held her gaze for one long moment, and she envisioned herself being pulled into the dark tunnels of his eyes before he turned abruptly and made his way back to his desk. She watched him as he surveyed the rest of the class, his eyes narrowing when he noticed she had yet to look away from him. It took Malfoy's low, harsh whisper to distract her.

"Are you completely bonkers?!" he hissed at her, and she glanced at him coolly.

The rest of the class seemed to share the assumption. Over on the Gryffindor side of the room, two girls, a blonde and an Indian, were mumbling things rapidly to each other and looking her way. The Longbottom boy had gone pale as a corpse, and even the celebrated Harry Potter was looking at her as though she had horns growing out of her head. Of course she paid no mind to them, and occupied herself with watching the blood pool in her palm like hot wine-coloured paint. Well, that would never do -- at this rate, the cut would be closed by the time the potion was ready to test.

She raised her hand to her mouth and took a healthy lick, allowing the metallic taste to settle on her tongue for a second before swallowing it down. Malfoy's expression twisted further into one of half-disgust, half-morbid enthralment.

"What the hell are you, part vampire?" he asked, and she took another lick before holding the wound open with her right hand and answering him.

"No."

"Does that...does that taste _good_?"

"Decent enough."

"You're a bloody weird girl."

"If you say so."

Malfoy glanced at his watch, added the mole crickets, and reduced the flame beneath the cauldron. The mixture stopped bubbling, and a swirling, silvery smoke that smelled like antiseptic began to rise from it. Gwendolyn idly threaded the fingers of her uninjured hand through the ribbons and watched as they curled in tingling tendrils around her skin. She risked another fleeting look at Snape, and this time found that he was already staring at her, wearing a scrutinising expression on his face, as though he were trying to gauge what she was thinking just as much as she was attempting to dismember his own mind's inner workings.

She had a suspicion that this dual investigation could have continued on for quite some time, if Longbottom hadn't somehow managed to cause his and a sandy-haired boy's potion to boil over and drench everything within a three-foot radius of their cauldron in scorching violet liquid. The Gryffindors all back up considerably, knocking over chairs and generally making a fuss. Snape was restoring order within seconds, cleaning away the spilled potion with a single wave of his wand. He deducted ten more points from Gryffindor, five from Longbottom for incompetence and five from the sandy-haired boy whom he addressed as Finnigan for not keeping a watchful enough eye on Longbottom.

In the wake of the chaos, Snape returned to his desk, and didn't attempt to meet Gwendolyn's eyes again. She bit down on her bottom lip and glared deeply at the stout Longbottom for shattering such a perfectly bewitching moment. He was shaking like a leaf and still trying to get what few wits he had about him in order while tending to a greenish-brown toad almost as lumpy as he was that had leapt from his pocket at the first sign of trouble. Clever animal. Quite the opposite from its owner.

"Stupid Squib," she heard Malfoy mutter under his breath. "No wonder that wart-ridden thing always runs away. It's trying to put itself out of its misery."

A tiny smirk tugged at the corners of Gwendolyn's lips. "Indeed."

By now, their potion had steeped long enough, and Malfoy took charge of straining it carefully into the set of crystal phials that were situated next to Gwendolyn's brass scales. Once he'd finished, Snape rose and came to stand in front of them, his gaze flickering to his newest student's injured palm.

"Miss Cross, as you were so eager to provide a helpful exposition..." he trailed off, and Gwendolyn gave him her hand. It trembled slightly cradled in his warm fingers, and his response was to grip it tighter, almost painfully so, as he poured one phial of the smoking violet potion over the wound. She watched it bubble like peroxide, and a pleasant stinging sensation travelled from her palm up her slender fingers and down her wrist.

"Do you feel anything?" Snape demanded.

"It burns," she replied, and brushed her thumb along his forefinger unconsciously. He let go of her hand immediately, then regarded her with the scarcest trace of shock against his meticulously controlled expression. Reaching into the pocket of his robes, he retrieved a clean white handkerchief and dropped it on the table in front of her.

"Success achieved," he murmured softly as Gwendolyn began to gingerly wipe the combination of blood and potion from her hand, then turned to Malfoy. "Well done."

Malfoy straightened his back smugly, seemingly unaware of the short exchange of sensuality between his professor and his partner, and Snape moved on to Crabbe and Goyle.

At the end of the class, Gwendolyn approached the Potions master's desk, and held out the muddled handkerchief for him to take.

"Keep it," he told her, not raising his eyes from his grade book.

Gwendolyn folded the bit of fabric neatly and tucked it into the pocket of her robes. "Thank you."

"That's unnecessary. And for the record, so is slicing yourself up in the name of this class."

"I apologise if it displeased you. It merely seemed the thing to do."

At last he looked up at her, his face deathly serious. "In the future, do try to contain your...impulses."

She nodded once. "As you wish."

Snape's gaze lingered on her for a few more seconds before he returned to his grading. "You're dismissed."

Gwendolyn left the room quietly, and found the dungeon halls to be completely empty. With a small sigh, she pulled out her schedule card. Her next class was Defence Against the Dark Arts with a Professor Lupin, room 302, near the Charms corridor. It would be easy enough to find on her own.

Casting one last glance at the door to the Potions room, she tucked the card into one of her textbooks and started for the stairwell that would lead her up to the ground floor.

* * *

The remainder of the day seemed uneventful compared to her fourth period class. Professor Lupin had excused her tardiness due to the fact that she was new to the school, and had sent her down to the hospital wing (with directions) to have Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse, bandage up her cut.

"How on earth did that happen?" Lupin had asked, nodding at her hand not a minute after she stepped foot in the room. She realised later how odd it was that he'd noticed it so quickly, as her palms hadn't been facing him. It was almost as though he could smell the blood.

"We were making a wound-cleaning potion last period. I needed a wound to test it on."

Lupin had looked momentarily aghast. "And Professor Snape agreed to this?"

"No. He was rather opposed to it, though that was after the fact."

She could tell that the brown-haired man in the patched-up robes was just itching to ask her why she had agreed to harming herself, but he had controlled his rudeness well and simply given her a pass to the infirmary.

Lupin had a very hands-on way of conducting his classes that one wouldn't expect from someone so perpetually tired-looking. They had spent the majority of the lesson discussing kelpies, their habits, and the proper way to subdue them, and the rest of the lesson making sure that everyone was proficient in Placement and Warming Charms. He said he'd spoken to Dumbledore, who'd in turn spoken to the merpeople who lived in the lake, and both had agreed to a field trip of sorts -- there were currently four of the water demons residing in the lake that were becoming nuisances by continuously disguising themselves as fish and then attacking the giant squid whenever it attempted to eat them. The merpeople had been planning just to kill them, but Lupin would have considered it a great learning experience lost if that were to happen. Thus, the fifth-year classes from all four Houses had the infuriation of subduing one of the beasts each.

"Don't forget -- swimsuits and towels on Wednesday, and we're meeting on the south lawn of the school," Lupin's parting words had been. Gwendolyn had yet to decide what she thought of him. If she didn't get eaten by water demons in two days' time, he might turn out to be an amusing switch from the norm.

Divination had again been different, though nearly as entertaining. Professor Trelawney had turned out to be a bug-like, melodramatic bint of colossal proportions, and had spent the entire period flitting around the room, proclaiming that Gwendolyn's life was so tragic that its misfortune was second only to Harry Potter's poor, wretched existence. The longer the student remained sitting quietly, as she was prone to doing no matter what the situation, the more horrifying and ghastly Trelawney's predictions became.

The experience would have been maddening, if Gwendolyn hadn't taken every word the so-called 'Seer' had spouted with a mine of salt. She would have to remember to bring popcorn to the class tomorrow.

By dinner, Pansy wasn't any more amicable toward Gwendolyn than she had been all day, and once the others had taken the hint, they began to follow her example without asking why. Apparently, the newer girl's mere association with Malfoy was cause for expulsion from that particular social circle. Not that it mattered. Malfoy didn't seem to care -- he had no reason to like her any less. She was pure-blood, and she didn't make him look bad in classes. Gwendolyn had an inkling that part of the reason he hadn't shunned her along with the rest of them was because she was as he said -- bloody weird -- and it was about time the Slytherins had someone in their House who gave people cause to talk, even if she was a little...eccentric. If Gwendolyn happened to be that someone, then he wanted to be associated with her. The arrangement was fine by her -- she had someone to keep her amused, and it pissed Pansy off to no end. A win-win situation if there ever was one.

The Great Hall was a chorus of activity that night. Word of Gwendolyn's Potions demonstration had spread like wildfire throughout the school. Already she'd been informed that she was part vampire, an escaped mental patient from Saint Mungo's, and an undercover operative of Lord Voldemort's.

"Please. If my life were that interesting, I certainly wouldn't be wasting my time and power here of all places," she huffed, having just been told of a rumour that consisted of a blend of all three of the others, something about a love triangle and a long snake moan. Prodding her mashed potatoes with her fork, she directed her attention to the High Table, where Snape and Lupin were talking amongst themselves, the former looking especially disagreeable and the latter somewhat concerned. As if he sensed her watching him, Snape caught her gaze and held it intensely, his midnight eyes boring into her pensively, wrapping her mind in nothingness. Lupin followed his line of sight, and observed the altercation with a shady frown.

Gwendolyn chewed thoughtfully on her lower lip and felt her hands begin to shake in her lap. She clenched them into tight fists, savouring the sting as her nails dug into the cut through the bandages. How strange it was, this reaction she had to him. With Death, her hands had been unfaltering and still. But then, with Death, most everything became still. Why then, with Snape, did things seem to revolve around this delicious pain? Death could come with pain. Perhaps that was what the Potions master was -- a facet of Death, one of many means to the inevitable end.

Across the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table, a small explosion tore her awareness elsewhere. The sandy-haired Finnigan boy was covered in black soot, a helpless, broken expression on his face. Gwendolyn heard the bushy-haired girl -- Granger, she thought her name was -- reprimand him loudly.

"For Heaven's sake, Seamus! You've been trying for over four years already -- that stupid spell is never going to work!"

Malfoy snickered callously. "I'd tell them about the anti-alcohol Transfiguration enchantment placed on the school, but...that just never stops being funny."

Gwendolyn took no notice of his satisfaction and shifted her eyes back to Snape -- but it was too late. He was now paying more mind to his food than he was to her. Yet another spell broken by the Gryffindors -- two in one day. Did catastrophe follow them wherever they went? And if it did, why did they have to bring it to the attention of others, namely those who couldn't have cared less? With a short, frustrated sigh, she forced her hands to relax and picked lackadaisically at the string beans on her plate.

* * *

When she slid into bed that night, Morgaine curled up contently at her side, Gwendolyn lay awake as she always did for at least an hour before sleep would claim her. It had been quite the eventful first day. In the span of but fifteen hours, she'd acquired a reputation for being a bit askew of normal -- something that had taken nearly two years for her classmates at Asgarth to recognise -- and she was already dancing on the tightrope between who she could count as enemies, and who were allies. She'd looked her Death in the eye and had gotten lost twice. All this, and she hadn't even attended Charms or Herbology yet. It could very well prove to be a most interesting year.

She felt herself begin to slip into a restless unconsciousness filled with dreams of burning hands charring pale skin, writhing on a blanket of black. Through the lucid cravings her fingers curled tightly around a piece of white cloth, still tarnished with blood and potion. Yes, certainly an interesting year... 


	2. Green-Eyed Monster

**Part 2 - Green-Eyed Monster**

Gwendolyn preferred not to think of the following Tuesday, nor any Tuesday or Thursday that wasn't during a holiday for the remainder of the school year, as an actual day, with the resolution that weekdays that didn't include Potions weren't worth the bother of being labelled 'real'.

She woke on Wednesday morning of her own volition at quarter to five. Just one more example of her idiosyncrasies -- if she had to wake up in the morning, the world still had to be shrouded in darkness. It suited her well that that the seasons were delving into winter, and the nights were becoming longer and longer with each passing hour. That specific morning, she had arisen from one of her more acutely pleasant dreams feeling restless and somewhat asphyxiated, so after bathing, dressing, and twisting her hair into its ever-present braid, she quietly threw on her cloak, grabbed her broomstick, and slipped out of the dormitories in silence.

Clandestinely she crept up the stairs that would lead her from the Slytherin dungeons into the Entrance Hall, keeping close to the shadows so that she wouldn't be spotted by any possible passers-by. She'd remembered Malfoy saying something the day before about the trophy room always being unlocked, and had spent the last quarter of the lunch hour locating it. Now she found it easily, the last corridor on the left of the Great Hall, centre door on the left. Pulling it open quickly so that it wouldn't creak -- that horrid caretaker, Filch, whom she'd seen patrolling the halls in the evening, probably abstained from oiling it to up his chances of catching students in the act of rule breaking.

The people in the paintings that hung on the walls slept soundly as she entered the room and made her way over to the window closest to the back right corner. The glass was iced in frost, and her breath made a patch of fog when she leaned close and pulled out her wand.

"_Alohomora_," she whispered, and there was a soft click as the window unlocked. Cautiously, she pushed it open and tossed her broomstick outside before climbing through. Her boots crunched loudly on the hoarfrost coating the grass. She closed the window gently and hissed at her broom, "Up!" It obeyed, immediately snapping into her hand. She mounted it and kicked off the ground into the frozen night air, cloak and robes fluttering out behind her.

Higher and higher she rose, the wind whistling as it rushed past her ears, making them sting with cold. She leaned to her right and curved sharply around the northeast corner of the castle, then tilted the front of the broomstick down into a lean dive, coming up again not two feet from the ground.

Gwendolyn adored flying. Her parents had taught her how at the age of three, though she had been at least five or six before she dared to put more than ten feet's distance between herself and the ground. Stopping had been an issue as well -- her mother still couldn't help telling friends the story of how she'd once flown straight into the side of the house after forgetting how to brake.

But now, her fear long overcome, Gwendolyn's broom was like an extension of herself. There was nothing else for it. Before she started at Asgarth, her father had made the suggestion that, if she enjoyed flying so much, she should try out for her House's Quodpot team. Gwendolyn had put a stop to that train of thought without delay -- though she enjoyed being a spectator of the game, she was definitely not a player.

"I'll keep my brain in one un-bruised piece, thank you," she'd told him, and that had been that. Her parents had learned early on in their daughter's life that once her mind was made up about something, there was precious little chance of changing it. It was usually fine by them, for once she did decide on something she wanted, she possessed a surplus of determination and would stop at nothing to make it hers.

With that sort of thinking, she would have been delighted to know that she was not the only person awake and outside at that hour of the morning. 

Professor Snape paused on his way to the greenhouses as a shadow whisked past the Divination Tower. He narrowed his eyes and watched it arc roundly up, silhouetted against the yellowish glow of the waxing moon, before plunging back toward the earth in a smooth line. A person on broomstick, obviously, but who, and to what purpose? 

He caught the briefest flash of a braid whipping against its owner's back, and the answer presented itself to him readily. Of course. If it wasn't Potter and his little gang causing mischief, it would be _her_. His newest student seemed to thrive on making a spectacle of herself, as the incident in his classroom on Monday had more than proved. He admitted to having been taken aback by her actions -- after all, it isn't every day you find someone not only willing to sacrifice blood for a class, but who does it of their own desire and without a second thought -- but they weren't the solitary reason for his being wary of the girl. On more than one occasion, he'd noticed her watching him, her face expressionless, her large but sleepy-looking dull green eyes staring impassively into his. He knew that look -- as he was often guilty of it himself -- and he knew that it was not to be trusted. People, as a rule, do not conceal their thoughts from their visages, unless what they're thinking is full of ill intention.

"Miss Cross," he called to her. She slowed on her broom and turned to face him for a moment before descending to land gently in front of him on the grass. She said nothing, but her expression was questioning. "What are you doing buzzing around the school grounds at this hour?" he asked. "No student is to be out of their dormitory between ten in the evening and six in the morning."

"I apologise, professor," she said, aloof as always. "I awoke early and was feeling restive, so I went for a quick flight to calm my nerves."

Snape glared at her dubiously. The paleness of her skin nearly glowed in the bleary light of the moon, but her eyes were eclipsed by shadows, giving her a wraithlike appearance. He remembered the words of someone far older and wiser than he: "Never place your faith in something that doesn't appear to be alive, for the dead have nothing to lose from exploiting the living."

"Return to the dungeons," he snapped. "Now. And the next time you're feeling particularly wing'd, I suggest you curb your urges until during school hours."

She nodded once, and headed back toward the castle, leaving Snape to go about his ingredient collecting in peace. That girl...something wasn't right with her, something more than the usual Slytherin ambition. She reminded him faintly of himself at the same age -- soft-spoken and intelligent, with an almost palpable thirst for something unknown glimmering beneath the peripheral muteness. It was a dangerous thought. An unsettling one at best.

He collected what he needed and placed the damp plants into several small leather pouches, then pulled a phial of concentrated Mooncalf plant-growth potion from his pocket and left it for Sprout in exchange for what he had taken. As he was walking back toward the school, something metallic shimmered on the ground where the girl had been standing. He bent and picked it up; a small skull pendant on a long, threadlike silver chain. Her finely-boned features flashed in his mind's eye, and he pocketed the necklace to return to her later before continuing on his way.

Gwendolyn had returned to the common room as he had asked, and was currently taking advantage of having it all to herself. She'd left the lamps dark, but had lit a fire in the fireplace and curled up comfortably in one of the regal, high-backed chairs in front of it after retrieving a quill, ink, and a small, thin, leather-bound book from her trunk. In this, she wrote methodically and quickly:

_November 17th  
6:09 a.m._

I no longer envy the dead their final glimpse of true beauty. Often times I've wondered whether I would see my love again before my time came; never did I expect to find another so truly suited to bear the burden of my infatuation. Has Death been watching me these long years? Has he observed the passion with which I covet him, and felt sympathy for the solitude I have borne in his name, and seen fit to grant me a reward for my patience and fidelity? Is Professor Snape my gift?

I believe so. He's blessed me, Death has, blessed me with this distraction, this pristine adoration for someone other than he, and yet him all the same. I will not dishonour this splendorous present. I will love Snape as I love Death, and through Snape will Death at last be able to feel the raw intensity of my yearnings. I have been given an obligation to bring this trinity to ecstasy. I will not fail.

When she had finished, after stabbing the last period into the paper with such force that the ink bled into the surrounding letters, she tore the page from the diary and placed it carefully into the fire. It burned with a quiet hiss, blackening and curling in on itself until the ashes began to swirl with the vigour of the flames. She had always burnt her diary entries the moment she'd completed them, not for the sake of destroying evidence, but because she was of the belief that Death would not be able to read of the secrets she saved for him unless she killed their tangible forms.

Gwendolyn would have to repay him this kindness, something more substantial than a simple scorched note of thanks. It would need to be something corporeal, something that could convey in all honesty her gratitude toward him, an offering of sorts.

She coiled her arms around her knees in thoughtful contemplation, blankly watching the fire stir, unknowing that her efforts would be fruitless until she finally left to go to breakfast, when Morgaine would flee the dungeons and present to her the solution of her puzzlement in the form of a fat, croaking mouthful...

* * *

"Murder! Carnage! Butchery!" Longbottom screamed as he bolted into the Great Hall, his round face flushed and streaked with tears. The students and faculty all swivelled to stare at the boy, some looking alarmed, others worried, and some amused. Harry Potter leapt to his feet, ever the champion of injustice, and placed his hands on Longbottom's shoulders.

"Neville, what's happened?" he asked, his round glasses slipping down his nose a bit.

"T-Trevor!" Longbottom stuttered. "S-s-someone's k-killed Trevor! I f-found him in the t-trophy room, all cut up to b-b-bits!" Unable to continue, the chubby boy broke off into a tragic wail. Potter exchanged glances with his two ubiquitous companions, and the three rushed for the doors, Longbottom trailing behind them, sniffling. At the High Table, Professor McGonagall rose, a warning gesture that any students who tried to follow the others in hopes of gawking at the dead toad would be met with severe reprimand. She exited the hall out of a side door and headed for the trophy room.

Gwendolyn watched the scene with deliberate indifference, and continued eating her jam-smothered toast. Beside her, Malfoy looked rather jovial as he took a gulp of his tea.

"If you ask me, the thing offed itself. If I had to claim relation to Longbottom, I'd be welcoming a knife or two myself."

Gwendolyn responded with a hint of a smirk, and cast her eyes toward the High Table, where Professor Snape had already fixed her with a fierce stare. The smirk couldn't help but widen a fraction until he looked away to mutter something to Dumbledore. She wondered, did he know? And if he did, was he pleased? She supposed she would find out the answer later on in Potions...

* * *

News and rumours of Longbottom's deceased toad had spread throughout the school even faster than Gwendolyn's Potions incident. Walking to lunch, she overheard a pair of redheaded twin boys discussing the 'murder' in conspiratorial tones with a dreadlock-endowed black boy.

"Ron said it was like some sick painting—"

"Inside a ring of blood—"

"Completely gutted with its lungs fanned out under its back like wings—"

"And its heart in its mouth!"

"Wicked," the black boy hissed, half-disgusted, half-awed. "Any idea whodunit?"

"Not a one, 'cept—"

"It's gotta be a Slytherin."

"Yeah, or Mrs. Norris had herself a gay old holiday."

The trio dissolved into chuckles, and Gwendolyn stopped her eavesdropping. She still wasn't suspect, as far as she knew. No doubt the accusation would come, though it was neither here nor there. She'd been very cautious not to leave any incriminating data behind. There was no proof of her involvement, and she was confident that the whole thing would blow over in about a week or so.

At lunch, Malfoy's pleasant mood still held fast. When she entered the Great Hall, he was in the middle of an impression of Trevor, sprawled out on a cleared bit of table, twitching with his tongue hanging out unfavourably. The group of Slytherins sitting nearest to him, including Pansy and her gaggle, sniggered appreciatively. Across the hall, the Gryffindors wore angry scowls and commented loudly on the distasteful display of disrespect and mockery.

Gwendolyn cast them a spiteful look, and gave Malfoy a polite round of applause. From what she'd seen of the Gryffindors and the way they (and the other Houses as well, to a lesser extent) discriminated against the Slytherins, trading the same low insults but always managing to convince the professors of their higher moral ground, she wasn't tremendously fond of the group.

Malfoy bowed in her direction and elbowed Crabbe over to make room for her next to him on the bench, a gesture that made Pansy grind her teeth in annoyance and jealousy.

"Hey Gwennie," she snapped, "everyone knows you're a blood-freak; were _you_ the one who did away with Longbottom's toad?"

"Gwendolyn," Gwendolyn corrected her, maintaining her cool composure easily. "And no, certainly not. I've no desire to dirty my hands with such a wart-infested creature. But as you are the purveyor of the preposterous, Pansy, I can understand your suspicion."

Malfoy sneered at the pug-face girl as Gwendolyn delivered the final attack on her dignity:

"What about you -- are you the savvy murderess? Your fingers have been looking awfully bumpy lately. Is it a frog-fetish?"

"Ew. Nasty, Pansy," Malfoy grimaced openly, and Pansy turned bright scarlet with rage and embarrassment. She stood, turning her mean brown eyes on Gwendolyn and mouthing "Slut," before nodding to her fan club, who were stifling smirks of their own.

"Ladies," she hissed, and they filed out of the Great Hall in a great huff, their noses in the air. Malfoy rolled his eyes, but watched them go with an apprehensive look.

"You might want to watch where you step with her," he muttered, turning back to Gwendolyn. "She's a simpering tart, but she can be the queen bitch when she puts her mind to it."

"I can take care of myself," Gwendolyn said, cold and dismissive, and Malfoy shrugged in an if-you-say-so way.

* * *

She was the first one in the classroom for Potions that day. Snape had already written down the day's assignment on the blackboard, and she busied herself by copying it down meticulously on a piece of parchment, duplicating the sharp edges and looping curves of his handwriting to near-perfection. She was halfway through when the rest of the class entered and noisily took their seats, and had finished by the time the professor swept wordlessly into the room. As the ingredients were already laid out for them on the tables, she began to sort and weigh her gillyweed and Mandrake leaves. Due to Professor Lupin's 'project' that they would be undertaking that afternoon, the day's potion consisted of a mixture of both plants, boiled, strained, then drunk down quickly. If everything had been completed accurately, then the desired effect of temporary amphibianism would be attained -- the gillyweed would enable them to breathe underwater, whilst the Mandrake would allow them to retain full function of their lungs, thus keeping the possibility of suffocation at bay should they need to exit the lake quickly, or should one of the kelpies decide that they looked like the water demon equivalent of filet mignon. 

Gwendolyn made sure to weigh each dripping cluster of plant carefully -- Malfoy had told her during lunch of a fifth-year Hufflepuff who'd botched his experiment and had spent the next two hours vomiting up small fish and saltwater. It wasn't a mistake she cared to repeat.

She glanced up at Snape's desk. His tunnel-like eyes roved over each table at length; everyone but Gwendolyn was copying diligently from the blackboard. He stopped when he got to her, regarding her stare with an irate glare. He looked as though he was about to reprimand her for it when she broke away from his gaze and pointed her wand beneath her cauldron.

"_Incendio_," she murmured softly, and a brilliant blue flame sprang up from where previously there had been only air. This seemed to satisfy Snape, and he moved on down the rows. Gwendolyn added the four ounces of water required for the potion into the cauldron, and Snape began to address the class from his seat.

"I advise you all to take special care in the weighing and timing of the addition of the ingredients. To become lax in your measurements could result in a few rather...unpleasant...side effects, as you've all no doubt heard from Mr. Finch-Fletchley earlier today."

A few members of the class winced, and Snape allowed his mouth to draw back in a sneer. Malfoy leaned close to Gwendolyn.

"Served him right. Mudbloods and magic just don't mix -- why can't people see that?"

Gwendolyn answered him with an unknowing shrug. She wasn't a diehard advocate of bloodlines, though she was immensely proud of her own heritage. To her, purity of anything but blood was a disease, a weakness to be purged through any means necessary. In her world, innocence and naivety were the sins.

She felt her thoughts digressing, and concentrated on her potion-making, adding in the gillyweed at the first bubble of the water beginning to boil. She took hold of Malfoy's wrist to keep an eye on his watch for the time. He didn't seem to mind, and sorted out his Mandrake leaves on his scales one-handed. Precisely five minutes later, Gwendolyn added her powdered newt eyes to the frothing green cauldron and stirred the mixture gently.

Snape had begun his usual pacing through the rows, marking various comments and observations down in his grade book. He stopped in front of Gwendolyn's section of table, and after nodding in approval of the progress of her potion, reached into his pocket and extracted something that glinted silver in the dungeon firelight. He held it before her face, where it swung back and forth like a pendulum.

"Miss Cross, I believe this belongs to you," he said silkily, and Gwendolyn looked between him and the necklace curiously. She wore it every day, and it was suffering from such continuous use -- the clasp must have wrenched open when she had gone flying earlier that morning.

Gwendolyn took the necklace from his hand and laid it out in a flat line on the table. "Thank you," she told him quietly, and he nodded once and continued on his way. She pointed her wand at the clasp and whispered "_Collumus Reparo_." It tightened back to its original position, and she hooked it back on around her neck.

Checking Draco's watch again, she counted down the last nine seconds in her mind before adding her Mandrake leaves and watching the concoction foam and hiss deep turquoise steam as it turned a sickly lime colour. It smelled of brine and cabbage -- not extremely confidence-inspiring, as she knew she would have to drink it.

One heart that definitely wasn't in potion-making that day happened to belong to Neville Longbottom. Still in shock and mourning his departed toad, Longbottom's watery eyes were unable to read his watch correctly. He'd added in his powdered newt eyes a couple of minutes too late, and with disastrous consequences -- Snape had chosen his as the first potion to be tested, and the moment the boy had swallowed it down, he began to gasp for air, and his skin shrivelled like that of a prune's as he sweat profusely.

All of the water in his body had begun to leak through his skin, and was puddling under his chair as though he had wet himself. The class watched in horror and wonderment as his flesh puckered and dried, and even Snape looked mildly surprised at the reaction.

"Granger, get him to the hospital wing," he ordered the bushy-haired girl with no large amount of urgency in his voice. "And do take the broom and dustpan. I think Filch would be most displeased to find Longbottom crumbs littering the halls were you not to make it in time."

The girl scowled at him deeply and hurried the gasping Neville out of the room. Snape watched as they left, then turned back to the rest of the class and sighed at the Gryffindors' incensed expressions.

"I _did_ warn him," he said simply. "Potter. Drink up."

Harry's potion had a great deal more success than Longbottom's had. He gasped at first, and the class recoiled. After a few seconds, he caught his breath, and the Gryffindors all heaved a collective sigh of relief. Harry looked down, and found that his hands had become webbed, and a fresh set of gills were puffing away on either side of his neck. Snape glowered at the accomplishment, and marked something down in his book.

The rest of the class had similar reactions, each with varying degrees of extreme. A blonde Gryffindor girl had grown gills, but her hands had remained the same, whilst Titus Nott, a Slytherin boy, had gotten not only gills and webbing, but had turned a pale shade of green as well. At last it was Malfoy's turn -- his reaction to the potion was much the same as Potter's -- and then, finally, Gwendolyn's.

She tossed the phial of milky lime-coloured liquid back like a shot, and immediately felt her body seize up. She didn't try to breathe -- rather, she let the odd sensation wash over her, until she felt her skin begin to prickle and reform. She shut her eyes and kept them closed until she heard a wave of murmurs from her classmates, signalling that her change was complete. She opened her eyes and looked down.

Raising a webbed hand, Gwendolyn found the source of their stupefaction. Along the edges of her fingers and wrists had sprouted some rather odd-looking dark green scales that flashed iridescently in the light of the dungeon room.

"Gwendolyn," Malfoy hissed at her, his eyes wide in amazement. "Your face..."

She touched her forehead and felt the scales that had grown along her hairline. Following the trail from her temples, down the sides of her neck, around her shoulders, she found that they must have outlined her entire body, from her head down to her feet.

"How curious," she murmured, though it did figure -- she'd made her potion first. It had had longer to steep, so of course it was going to be stronger than the others.

Snape moved to stand in front of her desk again. He bent down to her level, placing a hand near her temple and frowning as he examined the scales closely. Gwendolyn tilted her head slightly to give him better access. His fingers were hot against her skin -- suddenly every part of her felt hot, hot and dry. Her stifling jumper and robes chafed against her tender new scales, making them itch so badly she could barely stand it.

She stood abruptly and began unbuttoning her robes without so much as a thought to what anyone might think of her. She let them fall to the floor, and pulled off the black wool jumper that was irritating her so, earning her a catcall from a boy behind her and a low whistle from Nott.

"Miss Cross," Snape's authoritative tone brought Gwendolyn back to her senses just as she was about to peel off her black camisole. At least that and her skirt were bearable.

"I'm sorry, professor," she apologised. "It's just that my scales were snagging, and it was dreadfully uncomfortable."

Snape nodded tersely, and Gwendolyn could have sworn that his cheeks were tinged the faintest pink with fluster. She bit down on her bottom lip, and he averted his gaze to the Gryffindor side of the room.

"You all have two hours until the effects of the potion wear off. Use them well. Class dismissed."

The students all left for their respective dormitories to change into their swimsuits. Gwendolyn took her time gathering up her cauldron, brass balance and discarded clothing, lingering a few moments longer than the others. She tossed a final glance at Potions master over her shoulder -- he was sitting at his desk, staring at what looked to be nothing at all, and did not raise his face to look at her. She left the room, trying to decipher whether that was a positive turn or a dire omen.

Snape waited until he heard the door close with a quiet click before moving to drum his fingers meditatively on his desk. He grit his teeth and forced his eyes to skim over the grade book that lay open on his desk, but the information slid through his brain like sand through splayed fingers. This was madness, him losing his ability to concentrate because a schoolgirl had found her robes intolerably distressing to her newly-formed and overly sensitive scales. He was right to distrust her. She was the sort that liked to slip beneath the skin of others and poison their minds to suit her own manipulations -- a parasite -- and though he was unaware of it as yet, she'd already planted the seed of her influence in his mind, and it would be but a matter of time before it burgeoned and made a host of him.

* * *

The other girls were already dressed and leaving by the time Gwendolyn returned to the dormitories, and she hurried to change into her swimsuit; a simple black two-piece that made her look almost ethereal, especially with her thin frame and newly-green skin. Quickly, she grabbed a grey towel from the ever-ready stack in the bathroom, tucked her wand into the side of her suit bottom, and rushed out to the south lawn of the school, where the rest of the class was gathered around Professor Lupin, who was holding a broomstick by his side, in front of the lake.

"Ah, Gwendolyn, excellent," he said as she approached. "Now that everyone's present, we can begin. Now, I want you all in groups of five -- we'll be tackling the kelpie one group at a time, ten minutes for each group. Your marks for this assignment will be based on how well your group does. The first group to successfully get a bridle over the kelpie's head, thus rendering it harmless, will receive top marks -- and a round of butterbeers on the next Hogsmeade trip, my treat."

A hushed chorus of 'ooh's and 'ahh's responded to Lupin's promise, and people began to divide up.

"Make haste, now," the professor goaded them. "We only have an hour."

Gwendolyn found herself predictably in Malfoy's group, and while she wasn't thrilled at the prospect of having to interact vocally with Crabbe and Goyle, she figured it just as well that they be there to provide the kelpie with a muscular distraction whilst she and Malfoy attempt to bridle it.

"Wow, Gwennie, love the look. It really shows off your lack of shape. Tell me, are you anorexic, bulimic, or both?"

Fabulous. Crabbe, Goyle, and now Pansy to bring down the group's IQ average. She sauntered over, her garish, shiny pink bikini flashing gaudily, a diversion Malfoy and the trollspawn seemed to enjoy watching. One of the many reasons Gwendolyn wasn't a fan of boys -- their universal motto appeared to be If Have Tits, Taste Optional.

"My name, for the last time, is Gwendolyn. Pansy, if your brain can't retain even that much information, perhaps you should look into St. Mungo's. I hear they have a wonderful program for the less fortunate, mentally challenged witches and wizards."

"And you would know all about that, wouldn't you?"

"Tell me again, why are you here?"

Pansy smiled smugly, draping a blatantly possessive arm around Malfoy, who was still too distracted by her swimsuit to care. "I saw that your group needed a fifth person and, me being the generous person that I am—" Gwendolyn rolled her eyes at this. "—I decided I'd do you lot a favour and fill in the gap."

"How kind of you," Gwendolyn replied sardonically, and Pansy cocked her head to the side (and 'accidentally' onto Malfoy's shoulder) as her smile widened. Gwendolyn wanted rip the fat tongue out of the pug-faced girl's mouth and feed it to a Hairy MacBoon, but as Professor Snape had recommended, she contained the impulse.

"All right," Lupin called out, cutting through the attacks on dignity. "Who wants to go first?"

Nott raised his hand, and his group stepped forward. Lupin nodded approvingly and gave a thumbs-up sign toward the lake, where a merman Gwendolyn hadn't noticed before nodded and dove beneath the calm waters.

"Professor Lupin," Blaise piped up, "what about the giant squid?"

"Not to worry," Lupin replied. "Professor Dumbledore has assured me that the merpeople are keeping a close eye on it at the other end of the lake."

Just then, a horse-like head with a mane of bulrushes surfaced about twenty feet from the shore, and he looked at Nott and his group.

"Warming Charms," he said, and the boys faced each other in turn and cast their enchantments, then headed down the beach and into the water.

After a few minutes of bated breath, their heads arose from the smooth waves. Lupin mounted his broom and hovered out between them and the shore, about ten feet above the water. The kelpie immediately grabbed for the closest person, a boy named Butch Hornby, with its teeth. Hornby dodged and sank beneath the water again as Uther Moon rose out of the water from behind it and took aim with his wand.

"_Stupefy_!" he yelled, but it didn't help to subdue the water demon. Now confused and surrounded by humans who obviously wished it harm, it thrashed about wildly and dove beneath the water, but not before a large, rounded tail could be seen beating at the surface. "It's turned into a beaver!" Gwendolyn heard Tracey Davis squeal. The class had all lined up around the lakeshore to better view the goings-on, but unless the battle floated up out of the water to take place where Lupin was perched, they weren't going to see much. The minutes ticked by, and after what seemed a long while Lupin nodded to the merman again. Moments later, the group of boys surfaced near the shore and climbed out of the lake looking frustrated and forlorn, and Lupin flew back to the rest of the class.

"It fucking bit me!" Moon complained and held out his arm, where a few nasty bucktooth-shaped wounds were bleeding quite a lot.

"Language, Moon," Lupin reprimanded, but he didn't sound too upset. "Go to the hospital wing. Take Hornby with you -- he's looking a bit green, and I don't think it's from the potion. Who's up next?"

After seeing how difficult their task was really going to be, none of the students were very eager to volunteer for it. To most, a butterbeer wasn't worth blood. But to one...

"Gwendolyn, good," Lupin smiled, while Pansy scowled scathingly and Malfoy looked hesitant. Another nod to the merman, a few Warming Charms, and an encouraging look from their professor later, the group headed for the water. The kelpie had resurfaced back to its original horse-like state, and was now pacing the waves suspiciously.

"We need a strategy," Gwendolyn muttered when they'd waded knee-deep into the lake. "Crabbe, Goyle, you two try to keep it from going underwater. It'll be a lot easier to deal with if we can actually form the words to hex it. Malfoy, you get it bridled with the Placement Charm. Pansy and I will try to knock it stupid with curses."

"Who made _you_ the leader of this little expedition?" Pansy asked indignantly.

"If you have any ideas, Parkinson, by all means, contribute."

The girl didn't reply, and Gwendolyn took her lack of words as a concession and dove beneath the waves.

Even with the Warming Charm Malfoy had placed on her, the water still felt cool and refreshing against her skin, which meant that the lake was probably nearing the freezing point. She forced herself to relax as she swam, and when her first breath of water filtered through her gills, she nearly choked, but fought the urge to surface for air. After a few moments, the tight feeling in her lungs and throat had passed, and she focused on getting to the kelpie, and how much easier and more pleasant it was to swim with webbed hands and feet. When she felt she was nearing her destination, she risked opening her eyes -- and found that her vision was completely clear. Part of the transformation she must not have caught before -- translucent membranes that slid over her eyes to protect them while underwater.

Gwendolyn wondered if she hadn't swum in a curve, for not five feet from her was a giant fishtail like that of a merperson's. But then, merpeople generally didn't have the forequarters of a horse. The kelpie must have taken on the form of a hippocampus.

Crabbe and Goyle, having had years of experience flanking Malfoy, swam around to either side of the water demon and seized its waist and shoulders simultaneously, keeping it from diving to safety. Gwendolyn pulled her wand from her swimsuit as she surfaced, pointed it at the kelpie, and spoke clearly, "_Impedimenta_!" At the same moment, she heard Pansy shout "_Confundus_!" But the curse didn't appear to be meant for the kelpie.

Gwendolyn was knocked backwards as the charm hit her spot-on in the head. Losing all reason and sense of where she was and what she was doing, she sank beneath the water -- water? She couldn't breathe -- or could she? Did she not need to breathe? Drifting aimlessly, her lungs still, she wondered if she was dead. But if that were the case, wouldn't Death have been here to meet her?

Death. Professor Snape's gaunt features flashed in her mind's eye, and she remembered that day's Potions class. The scales, the gills, Professor Lupin's class, the kelpie...it all came surging back to her, right up until Pansy's Confundus Charm -- Pansy.

The task at hand fled Gwendolyn's mind completely, and rage began to fill its place. She righted herself in the water, located Pansy's foot, and pulled her down below the surface. The other girl, clearly alarmed by the sudden jerking, began to kick violently. Gwendolyn evaded the flailing feet and yanked Pansy down to her level before grabbing her hair to keep her there. Pansy's face twisted in pain and shock as she tried to bat Gwendolyn away, but the hands tangled up in her hair held fast. They lashed out at each other, kicking and smacking as best they could with the water resistance. Pansy's nails came at Gwendolyn's face, and the taller girl felt her cheek sting with a fresh scratch. Somehow, they'd managed to twist themselves upside-down. It was a disorienting position to be in, and caught up in regaining her balance, Gwendolyn relaxed her grip on the other girl's hair. Pansy took the opportunity to spin herself around and start back toward the surface, but not before Gwendolyn delivered one last kick, shoving the heel of her foot into Pansy's mouth with all the force she could muster.

There was an audible, muffled cry, and Pansy's hands flew to her mouth as the water in front of her face became tinged scarlet with blood. They both surfaced concurrently, one bursting into sobs the moment her face hit the air, the other almost smiling in triumph. Lupin flew down on his broom, his face full of horrified concern.

"What the bloody hell happened down there?" he demanded.

"She kicked me in the mouth!" Pansy exclaimed, and Gwendolyn looked affronted.

"Yes, after she Confunded me and scratched my face."

"You _bitch_!" Pansy continued to scream, only slightly muted by her hands in front of her profusely bleeding mouth. "You broke my fucking tooth!"

"Well, no wonder my foot hurts."

"Quiet, both of you!" Lupin intervened, and the kelpie gave a sudden wrench, still held tightly by Crabbe and Goyle, though Gwendolyn saw that, one way or another, Malfoy had succeeded in getting the bridle halfway on. Lupin waved the merman over, and he finished bridling the water demon easily, rendering it docile and yielding. "Draco, would you be good enough to escort Pansy to the hospital wing?"

Malfoy nodded, and Pansy blubbered dramatically as he led her back to the shore.

"Ten points from Slytherin," Lupin sighed -- he obviously wasn't a fan of deducting points from any House. "Gwendolyn, I expected better from you," he scolded. "Not only was what you and Pansy did immature, but dangerous. The other members of your group could have been injured without your help in controlling the kelpie. You have no respect for them, or for yourself, carrying on the way you did."

"She cursed me," Gwendolyn said, her tone even but low. "It upset me."

"It wasn't your place to punish her! You should have come to me, and I'd have dealt with the situation accordingly."

Gwendolyn bit her tongue to keep from arguing with him. It would be pointless to say anything more.

"I'll discuss this with Pansy when she returns from the hospital wing. You should go yourself, have that scratch taken care of before it gets infected. You've both earned yourselves detention for tomorrow night. I believe Professor Snape is the one seeing it over."

Gwendolyn's mood instantly lightened with Lupin's last sentence, so much so that she had to work to keep up her caustic glare.

"Now, go dry yourself off and get to the hospital wing."

She nodded and submerged herself once more. Detention with Professor Snape...more of a reward than a punishment, in her eyes at least. She would have to kick Pansy in the teeth more often -- it was turning out to be a very worthwhile endeavour. 


	3. Down the Rabbit Hole

**Part 3 - Down the Rabbit Hole**

Gwendolyn didn't catch up with Malfoy again until Astronomy that night. He was a bit peeved at the fight, but that was more from the loss of free butterbeers than any actual concern for Pansy's well-being -- after all, they were Slytherins, fiercely competitive in nature. Physical fights were no stranger to that particular House.

One thing that could be said of Malfoy -- he was a trace more willing to believe that Gwendolyn could handle herself, and she was pleased to find that her seat next to him at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall was still available to her the next morning. Pansy, still busy milking her injury in the hospital wing, wasn't there to glare hatefully at this.

"Do you think it'll scar?" Malfoy drawled, gesturing at the cut on Gwendolyn's face. She shrugged.

"I doubt it. It's shallow, and I don't usually scar anyway."

He nodded and poked at his scrambled eggs with his fork.

"Pansy's beyond pissed. Pomfrey had to re-grow her front right tooth. She was bawling the entire time."

"Does it grieve you that I hurt her?" Gwendolyn asked, smearing orange marmalade on a crumpet.

"Not really, no. Why should it? It's not like she's my girlfriend or anything."

"According to her, she's damn near close to it."

Malfoy arched a fair eyebrow, but didn't seem at all surprised.

"I took her to the Yule Ball last year. She's been grabbing at me ever since. I don't really mind it usually. I mean, she is the prettiest Slytherin girl in our year."

"If you say so."

At that, Malfoy grinned mischievously. "What, are you offended?"

"Not in the least. Everyone has different standards of what's attractive and what's repulsive."

"You're good-looking," he continued on in another moment of obliviousness as he was draped in the shadow of his own ego. There was nothing for Gwendolyn to do but wait for it to pass. "But you're too skinny for my tastes. Besides, you're the first decent conversationalist I've met here. Why ruin that?"

"You think conversation ruins relationships?"

"Well...yeah. Why would you want to clog up all the good stuff by talking about it constantly? A good wife -- or girlfriend, as the case may be -- knows when close her mouth-"

"And open her legs," Gwendolyn finished for him, and Malfoy looked thoughtful.

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

"An excerpt from the brilliant mind of Lucius Malfoy?"

"Of course."

"Chauvinists everywhere salute him."

Malfoy did so, and she rolled her eyes for the sake of doing it. Malfoy's opinions on women's status in society were of no concern to her. She wasn't dating him, nor did she wish to.

The only male in the school she had any personal interest in whatsoever was sitting at the High Table, looking ever more grim and cheerless than usual. 

Snape was no stranger to sleepless nights. Insomnia was almost like an old friend to him. It allowed him time to collect his thoughts without the stresses of the day, to weigh the strategies he would pursue in both his work and his life. When he did sleep, his contemplations would sort themselves out in silver-tongued dreams, and when he awoke, his mind would be well-rested and better for them. To him, the black of night represented order and clarity, and under normal circumstances he welcomed it with open arms.

A cog had been thrown into the workings of his mind the previous night, one that blended sleep and sleeplessness together in a sort of lurid vivacity that wasn't common of his nightly unconscious musings. He wasn't often plagued by dreams of a sexual nature, let alone ones that merged pain and pleasure the likes of which the one last night had. He had woken feeling exhausted and almost dispirited, and when he had tried to remember the dream that had caused him such physical weariness, he had been unable to recall anything more than a few vague white-on-black flashes. This was especially odd for him, as he could usually call to mind his most deep-seated memories in exquisite detail without much effort.

He was tired and perplexed, in one of his more rotten moods, and to top it all off, he was scheduled to oversee detention hall that evening. If his Dark Mark began to burn with Lord Voldemort's summoning, he decided he might very well sacrifice himself to the Weasley twins. At least when they killed him, he was sure to go out with a bang, and possibly a pop, fizz, swizzle stick and explosion with a three-kilometre-wide radius.

Mentally he skimmed over the list of students that would be serving detention with him that evening: Malcolm Baddock, who had been caught trying to toast a cheese sandwich with Bluebell flames during Transfiguration; Susan Bones, who had received a detention from Snape himself for levitating notes to Hannah Abbot during his class, a detention he now regretted giving her out of personal inconvenience; Parker Stebbins for starting a tiff with Roger Davies over the last Quidditch match; and both Pansy Parkinson and Gwendolyn Cross, who'd apparently gotten involved in a fistfight with each other during the kelpie-breaking in Lupin's class.

That last one he found rather odd. Though he didn't trust the Cross girl as far as he could throw her (which might have been quite a distance -- she couldn't have weighed more than a hundred-ten pounds), she didn't seem the type to engage in a physical assault. She was so quiet and withdrawn, and so exceedingly slender he wondered how she'd managed to escape without any shattered bones.

He directed his gaze to the Slytherin table and found Cross in her usual place beside Malfoy. The only telltale sign of her outburst the day before was a thin, shallow scratch along her right cheekbone, at which Malfoy appeared to be gesturing. Strange that they had become such fast friends. The boy's demeanour was everything Gwendolyn's wasn't -- obnoxious, at times boisterous, and always very concerned with his public image. Their association made living proof of the saying 'opposites attract'.

_Alice in Wonderland_¹, he thought to himself. The girl reminded him of Alice in Wonderland. Her appearance was drastically different, of course, but her mannerisms and temperament, that same inquisitiveness, that same way of exploring the new things she encountered with obvious logic and sensibility, remained. It was almost uncanny.

"Knut for your thoughts?" Professor Sinistra, who had taken the seat next to him that had just been vacated by Madam Hooch, queried, drawing Snape out of his revelation.

"I like to think my thoughts are worth a trifle more than that," he replied, putting on a glare to counter her smirk, though of all the Hogwarts staff, Sinistra was the one whose company irritated him the least. Perhaps it was because he rarely saw much of her, as she was locked away in her tower almost as often as Trelawney. That, and she was the only Slytherin alumna in the entire school, and more often than not could relate well to his viewpoint.

"If they are, then I don't get paid enough to afford them," she sighed, slouching down in her chair and leaning her cheek on the palm of her hand, her elbow propped up on the table. In addition to being half of the Slytherin population of the faculty, she was also one of its youngest members. This was one gesture that showed her age, and in Snape's current frame of mind, the less he was reminded of adolescent behaviour, the better. He excused himself politely and found the incentive to rise to leave after casting a last glance at his Alice and the boy next to her, whose platinum-blond hair now looked remarkably like white rabbit fur. At least it was an improvement on ferret.

* * *

"I've got Quidditch practice this afternoon," Malfoy informed Gwendolyn proudly as they walked out to the Herbology greenhouses later on that day.

"Oh?" she asked, humouring his egotism. A pompous Malfoy was always much more amusing than an ordinary one. "What position do you play?"

"Seeker. I've been on the team since my second year, though there weren't any Quidditch games played at all last year, what with the TriWizard Tournament going on and all. It was a travesty, really, cancelling all those matches just because four people were assigned a task every couple of months. It should have only been three people, but our old Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher rigged the fire goblet to spout out Potter's name, so he had to abide the contract to participate, but I think his reluctance was a load of bollocks. Famous Potter, not wanting yet another chance to prove how great and wonderful and bloody splendiferous he is? Fat chance of that."

"I remember. It was all over the papers, even in America," she said, ignoring his digression into Potter-bashing. "All that nonsense about Bartemius Crouch's son and the Polyjuice Potion..."

"Yeah," Malfoy nodded. "The only good thing to come out of that tournament was the Dark Lord's rising. That dead Hufflepuff wasn't a great loss, either."

"You might want to lower your voice -- Sprout's coming."

Malfoy quickly changed subjects as the short, dumpy-looking witch approached them, covered in dirt stains and already wearing her dragonhide gloves.

"Anyway, are you going to come and watch the practice?" he persisted.

"As thrilling as that sounds," Gwendolyn sighed, "I'm afraid I have to disappoint. I have detention."

"Detention? From whom?"

"Professor Lupin. Pansy's meant to serve one as well today, though I imagine she'll be turning on the waterworks in front of Pomfrey to get out of it."

"Sounds about right," Malfoy nodded as Sprout began to address the class. They would be re-potting the Venomous Tentaculas that day, the spiky, dark red carnivorous plants that Gwendolyn thought were rather pretty.

"But you are coming to the match next Friday, aren't you?" Malfoy asked as he pulled on his dragonhide gloves. "Everyone goes to the matches. It's an unwritten law, you know. We're against Ravenclaw this time. Their team's decent, but they don't stand a chance against us. Adrian Pucey -- he used to be a Chaser, but he's switched to Keeper -- he's captain this year, and he's even more brutal than Flint was -- all that pent-up aggression from not being able to play last year. Like I said, it was a travesty."

"It will be a vicious match?"

"Of course. Not as vicious as it would be if we were playing Gryffindor, but-"

"I'll be there," she answered, cutting off his departure from the question. He nodded once, pleased, took out his wand, pointed it at the plant, and said easily, "_Confundus_." The plant immediately halted its attack on Goyle, who was partially mummified by its vines, and turned its blooming head in either direction, confused. Crabbe grabbed hold of its stem, keeping it stationary as Gwendolyn muzzled its toothy mouth and grabby appendages with the rope Sprout had distributed using a simple Wasi Charm. "This is for your own good," she told the plant, who looked deeply offended by its binding.

Some basic Muggle gardening was all that needed to be done after the Tentacula's constraints were put into place, though all of that, plus the clean-up that followed, ended up taking them nearly the entire lesson. When it was over, there wasn't a single person who wasn't patched with filth and sweating from the stifling greenhouse air. Flitwick would probably be less than tickled about his classroom being filled with a foul smell to rival that of the Snape's Potions room.

Gwendolyn wiped her forehead with the back of her hand and tucked the stray pieces of hair that had come lose from her braid behind her ears as the group of muddied Slytherins made their way toward the Charms corridor. Even Malfoy's carefully-combed locks were rumpled this way and that, which was putting him in a coarse mood. Already he'd ordered that Crabbe and Goyle walk behind him so that their stench wouldn't waft at his delicate nasal passages, and had been barking insults at poor Hornby, who had terrible allergies and always left Herbology red-eyed and sneezing, for sniffling too much and too loudly.

"Have your mummy dearest owl you a hankie," the blond boy spat. "A pink one with lace and embroidery to match your girlish, snot-ridden nose."

Hornby didn't reply -- he knew better than that. Over the last few days, Gwendolyn had learned that Slytherin House's social hierarchy differed little from that of Loki's back at Asgarth. You weren't a beautiful and unique snowflake capable of overcoming the House's cruel politics through anything less than a brilliant mind, and even then you were always a step below those whose families were possessed of more importance and stature than your own. Gwendolyn's family had had money and influence back in America. Here, they still had money, but commendable influence had yet to be won, and even she admitted that, though she could be just as content friendless as with Malfoy's company, in the eyes of others she was damn lucky to have won the boy's favour so quickly. But then, who knew what dealings her father might have had with Lucius Malfoy, who might have played a pivotal role in his son's acceptance of her.

It was a curious pondering, but it was all means to an end to Gwendolyn, and means were always negotiable. 

Flitwick ended up letting the class out half an hour early with orders to return to their dormitories and freshen up before their last classes of the day, as the stench of sweat and grime had indeed gotten to him. This suited Gwendolyn just fine -- though she was sure Snape was used to fetid odours from potion-brewing all day, it was simply bad manners to show up for an appointment covered in refuse and smelling like something Morgaine would dig out of a rubbish bin.

Divination passed with Trelawney's usual dramatics, which Gwendolyn had begun to thoroughly ignore. It was an easy accomplishment -- Trelawney's classroom always made her feel sleepy and stupid, providing a ripe mind for daydreaming. As Gwendolyn's daydreams tended to be woebegone at best and gorily violent at worst, all she had to do when the professor asked a question was claim that she had read the last fleeting image in her mind in a teacup, crystal ball, Tarot cards or other nonsensical props, and Trelawney would never fail to be satisfied with the menacing portent of the answer.

At last, the final bell rang, and Gwendolyn gathered up her things and dropped through the trap door that led from the classroom to the hall, paying no heed to the ladder. Promptly she descended down the first of many staircases that would lead her down into the dungeons, weaving easily between the sea of students congesting the steps. After a brief stop-off at her dormitory to lock her rucksack safely away in her trunk, she proceeded to the Potions room.

She was the first one there, of course. The other students were probably taking their sweet time in arriving -- who in their right mind would actually be looking forward to detention, and with Snape, no less?

The Potions master was sitting calmly at his desk, poring over a thick, ancient-looking book. He raised his eyes at Gwendolyn's entrance, arching a solitary brow at her punctuality.

"Sit down," he ordered gruffly, and she walked to the front of the room to slide into the seat nearest to his desk. If he noticed her deliberate placement, he gave no outward indication of it; only continued to read his book, and Gwendolyn was content to study him at length.

Professor Snape could never be considered a conventionally handsome man. She wouldn't have taken pleasure in his appearance if he was. His hair was lank, and it fell in dual curtains around his face, casting the hollows of his cheeks in shadow and making his features seem that much more skeletal. His nose was large, thin, and hooked; a trait that on others might be considered comical, but on him held a sort of regal dignity, a strong physical attribute that reflected the strength within. His build was wiry, his mouth thin, but soft. His fingers were long, bony, and elegant as he turned a page, his complexion sallow and wan as the paper he was skimming with his liquid black eyes. He was haunted, this one was, the way Death is haunted; restless spirits snapping at his heels, unsatisfied with the fate he bestowed upon them. Even on the brightest day, Professor Snape would be found shrouded in spectral shadows, and no pain is as inviting as that of a tortured past.

  
She was watching him again. He could feel her stare burning into him like the dull, gentle heat of a candle flame. He didn't look up, knowing that if he did, she wouldn't look away. It was better to ignore, to not give her the satisfaction of his curiosity. Despite his earlier epiphany, he held no illusions of this girl's childlikeness. Even little Alice had witnessed her share of bloodshed -- the Queen of Hearts had seen to that. If Gwendolyn Cross bore a phantom resemblance to a storybook character, it wasn't one of innocence and purity.

The remaining detention students began to filter into the classroom: Bones, Stebbins, then Baddock. Snape had received a note from Pomfrey that Parkinson would be absent due to physical ailments. One less body to keep watch over. 

He rose and left the classroom, and Gwendolyn lowered her eyes as he passed. After a short while, he returned carrying four metal trays, two in each hand. The other students grimaced as he placed a tray apiece in front of them. Gwendolyn peered at hers inquisitively. 

Laid out on its dorsal side, its front and back legs pinned down to the tray, was a fat, dead frog, and next to it, a scalpel, forceps, and a small glass jar.

"Dissections," Snape said tersely. "Harvest the livers and kidneys and put them in the jars."

Bones, a fleshy, shy-looking girl, hesitantly raised her hand. 

"Yes?" he demanded, and she shrank back in her seat a bit.

"You...you want us to cut them open?"

"No, I want you to pop them in the oven with a dash of lemon juice so they'll be ready in time for tea. _Yes_, Bones, you are to cut them open."

"How will we know which organ's which?" Stebbins asked, looking rather green around the gills himself, despite the fact that he was making a valiant effort to appear otherwise.

Snape sighed, glancing at them all with a critical eye. "Does no one here have a single concept of basic anatomy?" Gwendolyn lifted her hand limply, and the Potions master turned to her warily, his eyes narrowing. "Well then, Miss Cross, do enlighten Stebbins and the other halfwits."

She cleared her throat, though her voice remained hushed as always when she spoke. "In frogs, the liver is the large, brownish-coloured organ covering most of the body cavity. The kidneys are found on either side of the middle abdomen, behind the liver, stomach and intestines."

"How do you know all that?" Baddock griped, poking at his frog's legs with his forceps.

"Personal experience," she replied, so softly that Snape was the only one to hear her. He frowned at her dubiously as she picked up her scalpel and cut a long, careful incision into the frog's swollen belly. There was a noticeable tremor in her hands, and he couldn't bring himself to believe that it was because of animal cruelty. He watched her peel back the skin and outermost layer of muscle, then pin the folds down to the rubbery base of the tray, exposing the frog's entrails. Gently she prodded the obvious liver with the forceps, pinched it delicately and held it up as she severed the ribbons of muscle that bound the organ to the rest of the body before depositing it into the small glass jar. It landed with a slight, damp plop.

"Oh, _nasty_," came a hiss a couple of rows back. "Professor," Stebbins raised his hand, a look of revulsion on his face, "I think I popped something..."

"Is it green?" Snape asked wearily.

"Yeah, and sort of...pea-soupy-looking," Stebbins replied, his face screwing up even further.

"Congratulations. You've found the spleen."

"Oh. Eugh."

Bones, who was sitting very near Stebbins and was already ashen and sweating a bit, risked a glance at the boy's frog. She instantly went from grey to the colour of Stebbins' gooey spleen, clapped her hands over her mouth, and made a dash for the door. She returned a few minutes later, shaky and blanched once more.

"Five points from Hufflepuff," Snape slated her, "for leaving without permission."

Bones gave a feeble, incoherent burble and sank tiredly back down into her seat.

Gwendolyn had by now removed one of her frog's kidneys, and was slicing away its intestines to thieve the other. There wasn't much blood in this one. Longbottom's toad had been practically bursting with hot blood. She wondered if Longbottom himself, who had the relative shape of a toad, would be bursting as well. _If I gut him,_ she mused to herself, _will he not bleed? _

She clipped the kidney from its place and dropped it into the jar with its brother and the liver. Her hands still trembled with the nearness of the professor's presence as she twisted on the lid, and when she had finished she let them hover flatly above the table, watching for any discernable rhythm in their quavers. Finding none, she closed her eyes, and allowed an ephemeral vision to pass over her, one where she and the Potions master were the only people in the room, where he would leave his desk to kneel before hers and steady her hands with his own. They would bring her wrists to his lips, and he would kiss her pulse to prove she had one. His fingers would be callused and warm, far warmer than hers, she wagered, as her own flesh had the distinction of being abnormally cold. Fever and fervour had been the only reasons for her skin to ever exude heat.

"Miss Cross?" The silky voice drew her from her reverie, and she opened her eyes to stare into his, which were guarded and unrevealing. "If you've finished, you may clean up your tray in the basin."

Gwendolyn gave a short nod and went to dispose of her eviscerated amphibian, plucking out the pins and rinsing them off one at a time before dropping the corpse into the rubbish bin and moving on to wash the scalpel. She ran her fingertips over the sharp, fine blade, dragging it along her skin and resisting the temptation to press down. Blood-play had no business in a classroom without a purpose.

Snape watched her caress the cutting edge of the scalpel with shivering fingers, and found himself at a loss for breath. She paused quite suddenly, and looked at him. What were these glimpses she gave him of a weird and wonderful appetite for inflicting pain upon herself, and possibly others? There was no doubt in his mind that, while she had given no superficial clues, she had enjoyed hurting the Parkinson girl. She had sliced open her hand without so much as a trace of a care -- what was there to stop her from luxuriating in the anguish of others? Of all the types of people in the world, among the more dangerous were the sort who revelled in their own mortality. It was a bittersweet taste to hold on one's tongue, to feel with that much distance, and to not mind if it were to end abruptly. Most humans entertain the idea that immortality is only achieved after death, but to those that would delight in such finality...some say they were never really alive to begin with.

She had finished cleaning her materials, and hadn't bothered to dry her hands, which continued to quiver at her sides, dripping water on the bare stone floor. Snape regarded her with cool deliberation, and felt an icy thorn slip up his spine at her hollow stare.

"You're dismissed," he bristled, and she glided unhurriedly toward the door, suspending herself briefly in the threshold to bequeath to him a final glance before truly leaving.

* * *

When Gwendolyn entered the common room, she discovered that Pansy had just arrived back as well. Her gaggle of friends were all clustered around her (she was sitting on what Gwendolyn had come to know of as Their Sofa), fawning over her, asking her how she felt, though not a single one of them had gone to visit her in the hospital wing.

"Does it still hurt much, Pansy?" Constance asked from her place on the floor, closest to the fireplace.

"It aches a little," the pug-faced girl replied, holding a hand to her jaw for effect. Gwendolyn refrained from pointing out that the side of Pansy's mouth hadn't been injured in the least, and brushed past them without a word, hearing Pansy say loudly for her benefit, "For someone so grotesquely skinny, you wouldn't believe the size of her feet!" A chorus of giggles followed Gwendolyn down to her dormitory, which she promptly cut off by shutting the door.

Upon her appearance, Morgaine emerged from underneath her bed and squinted quizzically at her, as if to ask where she'd been.

"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting -- I had detention," Gwendolyn explained, scooping the feline up in her arms and scratching its neck affectionately. "With Death." Morgaine purred forgiveness and approval, and Gwendolyn stretched out on her bed with the cat curled up contentedly on her chest. "I was made to dissect a frog. I would have brought it back to you for a snack, as you were so patient and accepting about not being able to eat that toad, but you wouldn't have liked it. It was very dry and stale, and nearly bloodless." Morgaine gave a haughty sniff at the blatant wastefulness of humans. "But fret not. I'm sure there are plenty of students with pet toads, and some with rats. You'd enjoy a juicy rat, wouldn't you?" There was an especially rumbling purr of response. 

"I'll let you out in the morning," Gwendolyn continued. "There's bound to be a steady stream of students heading in and out of their common rooms. You find one, you hear? You find one, slip inside like a little mouse," a pair of pointed black ears perked at the word 'mouse', "and have yourself a decent breakfast. Something fresh, and not just the table scraps that the house-elves send up for you. Or, if sometime you're feeling insatiably peckish, you could try for one of house-elves themselves. An entire week's meals, all in one killing. It can never be said that I didn't teach you to be frugal. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Transfiguration paper I must write. Professor McGonagall's a feline Animagus, you know. Perhaps you'll meet her sometime -- she's the tabby with the square markings around her eyes."

Morgaine dipped her head as if to acknowledge and take note of this, then moved from her master's chest to her pillow as Gwendolyn went to retrieve her rucksack from her trunk. When all of her assignments were laid out in front of her on the bed, she closed the curtains for privacy in case Pansy and her gaggle returned anytime in the near future, dipped quill in ink, and began to write by wandlight.

* * *

The next morning, things were, for the most part, normal as they had been since she'd arrived a mere four days earlier. Pansy and the geese had begun ignoring her for the most part, with the exception of a few scathing remarks which Gwendolyn accepted as compliments. Malfoy was in a particularly hateful mood all during breakfast, as the work Binns had assigned on Monday was now due. It was meant to be an essay on the influence of Dark wizards and witches on England's Ministry of Magic, which translated roughly into Lord Voldemort Is Bad Because...

Gwendolyn despised such essays. She found them to be juvenile and exceedingly monotonous, as everyone in the class would end up spouting out the same reasons, whether or not they believed in them, in order to get decent marks. Now, Gwendolyn wasn't one to protest adamantly about anything much, but halfway through her Arithmancy assignment she had reached the lowest point of frustration and boredom she could stand, and by the time she got around to History of Magic, she felt it necessary to make something of a stand. Or at least firm sitting posture.

Malfoy was protesting in his own way -- through his family.

"I owled my father about it," he groused as they headed for Binns' classroom. "It's absurd, asking students for their honest opinions at times like this. I'm certain they'd haul anyone who so much as hinted at supporting the Dark Lord in for questioning."

"That would be terribly inconvenient," Gwendolyn replied.

"Would they haul you in?" he asked nonchalantly, but discretion wasn't among Malfoy's talents. He liked to boast far too often to get much practice in.

"They'd send me off to St. Mungo's in a bloody heartbeat if they knew half of what went on in my head."

Malfoy nodded, and she knew she'd passed his test.

"You can't say 'bloody'," he informed her. "You're American."

"I can say whatever I choose to. It's your fault, anyway, you British and your infectious accents."

"Yanks are the ones with accents. You lot spoke normally until you had to bugger off to the New World."

They entered the room and took their seats. The bell rang, and Binns arrived as he always did, through the blackboard. He puttered around for a short bit, taking attendance and shuffling through his lesson plans. After a few puzzled expressions and a blustery cough, which he did more out of habit than necessity, Binns hovered to the front of the room and surveyed the class with a stern look.

"I do hope you all remembered that your essays on the influence of Dark wizards and witches on the Ministry of Magic are due today."

"Yeah, hopes we did, because he can remember shit all, the mist-for-brains moron," Malfoy whispered, snickering to himself, and Gwendolyn hid a smirk behind her hand.

"We'll be reading them aloud," Binns droned on. "Any volunteers? No? How about you, Mr. Malfoy. You seem to be enjoying this class more than usual today."

Malfoy remained unfazed by the departed professor's comment, and stood, putting on his most superior sneer. "I've exempted myself from this assignment, on the basis that it promotes unfair discrimination against students whose opinions differ from those of the moral majority."

Binns cast him a withering glare. "Very commendable of you to fight for your corner, Mr. Malfoy, but unless your statement implies that you would rather be the one to teach class today, I recommend that you sit down and accept your failing mark with quiet dignity and grace."

A couple of the Ravenclaws gave snorts of laughter, and Malfoy sat, his sneer unwavering. Sit, he would, but as for acceptance of his mark -- he and the rest of the class, with the exception of Binns, knew that they would have a better chance of seeing Voldemort in a frilly pink tutu than they did of seeing a Malfoy accept failure without a vicious fight.

"Miss Cross, unless whatever you have to say is an extension of Mr. Malfoy's little speech, you're up."

"I will make this up to you," Gwendolyn whispered to Malfoy before standing. The boy looked puzzled, but she addressed Binns before he could ask what she meant by that -- he would find out soon enough. "I realise the assignment was to write an essay," she began, "but, like Mr. Malfoy, I had my own personal qualms with it -- creative concerns, actually. I figured everyone would be writing basically the same thing, so I thought I'd sum it all up in a short song."

Binns cocked a brow, sceptical, but curious, and Gwendolyn cleared her throat and began:

"Voldie, his teeth are green as moss; Voldie, he smells like petrol exhaust; Voldie, he's stale and mouldy; Voldie, you're old news, get lost!"

Finished, she curtseyed prettily at Binns as the class sat in a kind of dumbfounded silence. After a few seconds, a Ravenclaw boy by the name of Boot started clapping slowly. He was followed by another student, and then another, until the greater part of the class was giving her a standing ovation. Gwendolyn turned to face them and curtseyed once more, sent a small, sweet smile Pansy's way (as she was the only one scowling furiously -- even Malfoy was applauding half-heartedly), and returned to her seat. Binns even relented a few short, wispy claps before attending to her score.

"Well. While your performance left much to be desired in length and good taste, you delivered it with poise, and with public speaking, that's always worth something. I believe that was worthy of..." the ghost paused, narrowing his translucent eyes in thought, "...a 'C'."

She nodded, most pleased and half-surprised that she had received a score at all for four lines spawned of tedium and sheer laziness, let alone a passing one.

"Do you think me wicked?" she asked Malfoy as they headed for the common room during the morning break.

"Yes -- and not in the good way."

"You were applauding," she pointed out, and he shrugged callously.

"You made a fool out of yourself and I found it mildly amusing."

"I told you I would make it up to you."

"Oh, really?" he muttered, rolling his eyes. Gwendolyn recognised the signs -- with Malfoy, too many rude gestures always meant he was forcing himself to be aggravated.

"Yes, really. Come to the common room at the end of lunch -- the end of lunch, lest the effect be lost -- and you'll find out."

"Are you propositioning me?"

"Oh, _honestly_..." she scoffed, and turned up her nose at him, though out of the corner of her eye, she would have bet ten galleons that the corners of his mouth were curled up in a smirk.

* * *

He honoured her request, and entered the Slytherin common room five minutes before the end of lunch bell was scheduled to ring. She was sitting leisurely in one of the high-backed armchairs in front of the fireplace, which was unlit, thumbing through her Potions textbook.

"All right," he said, putting on his best bored expression, "where's this enigmatic 'effect' you were on about?"

"Look around," she said simply, turning a page.

Malfoy sighed and scanned the room, his silver eyes running critically over every object. Nothing appeared to be out of place. The floors were still be-rugged, the walls still be-tapestried, the-

A glimpse of white contrasted with the dark stone of the opposite wall and caught his eye. He moved closer for a better look, and forgot to concentrate on being bored. He wore a devious grin by the time he was near enough to view the object of his befuddlement clearly.

Hanging on the bare spot of wall were two large posters -- one, a recruitment poster that proclaimed "Death Eaters: Be All You Can Be" and another with a pointing, red-eyed serpentine man wearing a Union Jack flag for robes with the caption "Lord Voldemort Wants YOU."

"Do you like them?" Gwendolyn's soft voice hissed next to him, and Malfoy managed not give a startled jump.

"They're fantastic," he admitted.

"I'm forgiven, then."

"...I suppose."

"Fabulous. Let's away then, shall we? I can forgo lunch, but there's not a force in the heavens, in hell or on earth that's going to make me a second late for Potions." She shoved the textbook unceremoniously into her rucksack and headed for the door. Malfoy followed behind her, shaking his head.

"Bloody _weird_ girl."

* * *

¹ Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (or Lewis Carroll as he is known to Muggles), author of the Alice books, is in actuality a wizard, and still very much alive to this day, though nearing Dumbledore in years. He had originally penned the books for his niece, also named Alice, and had published the first book, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_, for the wizarding world in 1862. It was an instant success, and at the advice of a friend three years later, he sent the story to a Muggle publisher so that non-magic folk too could take joy in the tale of mixed dreams and realities. Thus, the wizarding families who had purchased the book were asked to keep their copies private, as the publishing dates and moving illustrations would certainly set off alarms in the Muggle world were any of them ever found. Dodgson currently resides in Hamilton County, New York, and runs a workshop for aspiring authors of the wizarding world. 


	4. Danse de Mort, Act One

**Part 4 - Danse de Mort, Act One**

The sound of his alarm clock rang shrilly in his ears, bringing him sharply out of a shallow, restless sleep. He punched it forcefully, and the silence that followed in its wake was almost as deafening. Somehow, he found it in himself to open his eyes through the miasma of physical exhaustion that engulfed him. He rose slowly, stretching sore muscles that were borne of an intangible exertion, and ran a hand over his face. It had been eight days since he had slept. Oh, he went to bed every night, closed his eyes and sank into a brief black nothingness, but he didn't sleep.

For eight nights, she had come over him like a Lethifold, leeching him of all vigour and warmth. For eight nights, he had dreamt the same dream. It started out differently every time, but always ended up here, in his bed, with her. He hadn't a clue who she was, and as far as he could tell, she invaded his mind for one reason alone -- the cause of his morning malaise.

He had thought the first dream a mere mental fluke; perhaps his twofold life had begun to weigh heavily upon him, or perhaps it had simply been too long since he had bedded a woman. But it hadn't been a fluke -- it had been the beginning of a pattern that was slowly but surely wearing him down.

He had scarcely been able to recall the first dream the morning after it had occurred, but with each passing sleepless night, he began to remember his lurid midnight encounters in more and more detail. What had once been a mere flash of white-on-black had become a vision of pallid emaciation painted against a canvas of thick charcoal smoke. A gesture was now a movement of liquid sensuality. He didn't even have to close his eyes to picture the shadows of diaphanous bones sliding beneath a film of gossamer skin, a memory that even now, in his dishevelled and shattered state, caused him to shudder.

Twice it had started out as a dance. He had taken her faceless form into his arms, and they had begun a gentle, enduring waltz around an empty Great Hall that was always unlit, but for the moonlight streaming through the enchanted ceiling. He would try to speak, "Who are you?" But the only sound that escaped him was one unsuited for public conversation. She would reply in a wicked giggle that bubbled up from the smooth, white column of her throat, and he would protest, try to speak once more, and again his voice would echo throughout the room, nothing more than a low growl. Words would dissolve into a language of gasps and groans against a chorus of guttural purrs, and as they danced into the dungeon, each step faster than the last, he realised that the music was in fact not music at all; rather, it was the heady rhythms of their passions.

She would draw him into his room, into his bed, and it was there that they reached the violent crescendo of dance and music that always left him unable to move. Crippled by a tapestry of pain and pleasure, he would nonetheless wake shortly afterward, and each morning it was a struggle for him not to give in to the desire to simply lie there, still as the dead, until the numbness of consciousness passed.

These nightly inclinations were more than a simple disturbance in his routine. Snape had always prided himself on his ability to be unaffected by his surroundings. That he could overcome emotion and matter with logic and mind was one of his most prized accomplishments. It troubled him deeply that a mere flight of fancy could impinge upon his psyche with such little effort. He felt despoiled, and had begun to grope for explanations in everything but himself. These dreams weren't him. They contained more than simple eroticism -- there was ardour there, infatuation and fascination that he could taste on the frayed edges of his unconscious. His unwillingness to utter the word kept him from calling it obsession. He refused to allow himself to become that paranoid, yet.

With laboured steps he retreated to his washroom for a scalding bath in hopes of burning away the soreness of his muscles, and the disorder of his mind.

* * *

Sometime in the dead of night, it had begun to snow, the first snowfall that late autumn that hadn't been accompanied by freezing rain. Gwendolyn had risen early as ever, and had crept up from the dungeons and into an unlocked antechamber that was just off to the left of the Main Hall. She hadn't taken her broomstick with her this time, preferring instead to remain inside and sit on a windowsill as she watched the crystalline flakes float softly down to earth, swathing grass and trees in a blanket of brilliant white. Jack Frost had at last awakened, and his youth was gentle.

Winter was by far Gwendolyn's favourite of seasons. It carried with it the beauty of Death; the leafless trees that jutted from the ground like gravestones, lulled to sleep by a coverlet of quietly resting ice. It was so tranquil, and never was time so lenient in its passing. Gwendolyn could watch the snow flutter down for hours and not realise that more than a minute had passed.

A mischievous, taunting hum rippled the silence. She recognised the song as 'Winter Wonderland', and the voice as belonging to Peeves the Poltergeist, a short, beady-eyed ghost whose only delight was behaving like a nuisance and distributing annoyance as though it were a material gift. He sounded close, and Gwendolyn slid from her place on the windowsill to disappear into a shadow-blackened corner.

He whisked into the room, and she stilled completely as he tottered in the air quite near to her, hovering for a couple of seconds before slipping through a door to her left. A few loud clangs and muttered curses resonated into the antechamber, and Gwendolyn figured Peeves to be rummaging for things unknown in one of Filch's custodial closets.

Her breath caught in her throat as another spectre entered the room, descending gracefully down from through the ceiling and glancing about the room with luminescent, predatory eyes. They passed over her fleetingly; it didn't appear as though he had seen her.

"Peeves," the Bloody Baron hissed lowly, and the clamouring in the closet ceased almost instantly. Peeves poked his head timidly through the door.

"B-Baron," he stammered, his mouth twitching up into a nervous, slippery smile. "How good to see you -- lovely night, don't you think? I was -- just looking for a dab of paint, you see, just a dab of paint for a p-p-p -- a personal venture of mine. A memorial, you see, in memory of that fat boy's toad. I was ever so sorry to hear of—"

"Leave us, Peeves," the Baron ordered. Like Snape, he didn't need to raise his voice to make himself heard.

"Us?" Peeves blinked, his squinty eyes darting around the room. "But—"

"Peeves," the Baron cut him off warningly, and the poltergeist skedaddled without further protest. The remaining ghost watched him leave, a hard glare following him out of the room. "You shouldn't be out of bed, Miss Cross," the Baron whispered, and Gwendolyn stepped forward into a sliver of moonlight.

"I couldn't sleep," she said simply, and the ghost turned to face her, the silver bloodstains on his robes glinting softly.

"Of course you couldn't. Unfulfilled spirits never can, until they've finished their secular business."

The quiet tones of his words reminded her of Snape, even so more than the words themselves.

"If you don't mind my asking, Baron...what's your secular business?"

The ghost stared at her as though she were a puzzle he was very close to solving. "Were that but something I could remember..." he trailed off. The sentence felt like it should have been punctuated with a sigh, but he held his phantom tongue.

"Does it sadden you, having to remain here? Do you long to meet him a second time, to be taken into true oblivion?"

"Him?"

"Death," she clarified, one hand fluttering up to entangle itself in the chain of her necklace. The Baron regarded her with a chary expression -- no one had ever asked him such a question before. There was a fine line between fear and respect, and he inspired both so severely that human conversation had been very unforthcoming throughout his many years of haunting. It was for the best -- he preferred his solitude, and had as well in life. This girl was an oddity -- rude in that she had asked him such a personal question, yet almost endearing in the childlike manner in which she'd asked it.

"No," he answered her. "I became numb to such lamentations quite some time ago. The longer I am here, the less mortal feeling I possess. One day, I am certain I shall simply fade away, just as I am certain that that will not happen anytime in the near future."

"What was he -- Death -- like for you?"

The Baron paused, narrowing his eyes with something that wasn't cruelty, nor was it amusement. "You take liberties in questioning me so much. Return to your bed, Miss Cross."

Gwendolyn studied him a few moments longer, then turned and headed for the door. She lingered indecisively a step before it, and was unable to bite her tongue. "Baron? Do you think perhaps we could continue our conversation another time?"

The ghost took his time in responding, and Gwendolyn was about to accept his silence as her answer when his detached voice slithered against her ear, "...perhaps."

She nodded once, and then obliged him, returning to the glacial air of the dungeons in high spirits. What a curious and brilliant stroke of luck it was to acquaint a ghost, markedly one so intriguing as the Bloody Baron. Most of the ghosts occupying Asgarth still refused to speak anything but their tongues of old, Norwegian and Swedish, and a handful of Danes that were especially prissy about the deterioration of the school's dominant language. Her mother would be glad of the amity Gwendolyn had acquired with the Baron -- Gretchen Cross was employed in the Spirit Division of the Ministry of Magic part-time, saying that "The company of socialites is of little interest to me. I'd much rather fill my time with those worthy of note, be they dead or living," and she did tire of her daughter's endless questioning of who she had met that day, and if they had mentioned anything noteworthy in regards to their bereavements.

Gwendolyn supposed that her adoration of the paranormal (which she had possessed, though to a lesser extent, before the tea party with Death), she had inherited from her mother. The woman had even married a ghost, in a sense. Her husband's occupation was veiled, and required him to be away from his home so often that sometimes it seemed he didn't even belong there, that he was merely a haunting himself. The concept only made Gwendolyn love him more. He never once neglected her, and every time he was sent abroad for business matters, he sent her a doll from whichever country he happened to be in at the time. "Our little secret, my darling dear, _mon enfant fou_," he'd whispered to her one night as he tucked her in before embarking on another trip. "A doll for every country, so that you always know where I am."

Her favourite doll, a powder-white porcelain one from Transylvania with tiny vampire fangs and eyes that rolled in their sockets to follow you wherever you went, she had been heartbroken to leave behind upon her departure from home to begin her magical education. But the thought that something might happen to it had been even more unbearable, and so she'd said her good-byes, and had asked her father to start sending her trinkets instead. The skull necklace itself was Ukrainian, and she had quite a few rings from Iceland that she couldn't wear because they slipped so easily off her thin fingers.

She wished for that doll now, wanted to feel the weight of it in her arms and the pull of ribbons in her hair as she ran downstairs to be swept up in her father's embrace. Oh, to be so young again...

But age did have its advantages, she reminded herself. Age had, after all, delivered the Potions master to her.

The thought of Professor Snape only exhilarated her more. She felt giddy as a child, and there was no means of calming herself in the Slytherin common room. The great grandfather clock standing at decrepit attention near the posters she had drawn for Malfoy told her that the hour of six approached -- surely the Baron wouldn't fault her a few minutes' head start were she to run into him again.

"No, surely not," she murmured to herself, and headed for the door. Malfoy had shown her the entrance to the kitchens earlier that week, and she was terribly keen for a hot cup of tea, which was one thing the Hogwarts house-elves could do spectacularly.

* * *

Snape scowled to himself as he read over an ingredients list in his personal copy of Moste Potente Potions. He had been up for over an hour now, the last quarter of which he had spent scouring determinedly over his private stores, gathering up the items he would need and running them over again and again in his chaotic mind; _asphodel in an infusion of wormwood, boiled fifteen minutes, frozen five, boiled ten...how much wormwood? And the asphodel...asphodel..._

Dark gods, he was tired. He couldn't teach like this -- he couldn't _live_ like this, and given the choice between risking a re-addiction and going mad from lack of sleep, the former seemed the lesser of the two evils. He would only need this once -- just once -- one night of peace to collect himself, then he could sort things out, regain enough of himself to find a solution to the problem. It wouldn't be like last time. He needed it now, truly needed it. It wasn't a craving -- the new mantra in his head, _Not a craving, not a craving, not a craving..._

Not a drop had touched his tongue in over ten years. Would it still taste the same? Being absent from his body for so long...he wondered if it had been long enough to incite a recreation of the first time, when it coursed through his body like liquid darkness, a sharp spike of rime before a rushed dive into nothingness that never kept its promise of giving the same elation every other time it was taken. What state would he be in then? Would that make it easier to stop again, the flavour of it fresh in his memory, or would he acquire a need for it that much faster?

No more questions -- he couldn't trust his answers. Quickly he lit a fire beneath one of his smaller cauldrons and allowed the wormwood to heat and soften into a mercurial form. He hated this part -- the waiting, even more now that it was a struggle to keep his thoughts rational. He would have to wait until dusk to take it... 

He strode the length of his office twice, back and forth and back and forth, before forcing himself to sit down and regain his calm. He didn't close his eyes -- to do so would be to invite the roundabout source images of his quandary back into circulation. Instead, he focused on the shimmering flame beneath the cauldron, and coerced himself into breathing deeply, letting the world fall away into silence.

The world disputed his endeavours. The more closely Snape listened, the more evident it became that something was stirring just beyond his slightly-opened door, a softly thumping sound like that of someone landing heavily on the balls of their feet. Suspicious and eager for the diversion, he rose to investigate.

He didn't immediately step out into the hall, alternatively choosing to watch the cause of his curiosity through narrowed eyes. With most, a bedlam-ridden mind meant the loss of their sense of concealment -- Snape only became that much more cautious.

It was the Cross girl again, and her feet were indeed bare as she paced along the corridor in which his office and classroom were located. She was clothed only in a small black slip of a nightdress and a forest green dressing gown she appeared to be drowning in, and he wondered how she wasn't freezing. Her eyes stared vacantly at the floor in front of her as she walked, as if in deep thought. He doubted she was waiting for someone -- directly outside of a classroom run by one of the most severe teachers in the school would have been a most imprudent place for a meeting. Still, he felt the desire to intervene in whatever intentions she held at such an early hour, and stiffened his back sternly before pulling the door open the rest of the way to reveal his presence. The girl seemed oblivious to this, and didn't cease her pacing until he asked her quietly, "What are you doing here?"

At the sound of his voice, she spun on her toes (as she had been facing away from him at the time), and looked at him with wide, unaffected eyes.

"I've just come up from having a cup of tea in the kitchens. It was meant to calm my nerves, but...haven't you ever felt so bottled up inside you want to scream, but you can't, because no one would understand why you were screaming when you didn't need help, and they would only end up cantankerous at you for causing so much bother, even though you hadn't intended to upset anyone?" she asked him, and Snape frowned at her as though she'd just recited the Mad Hatter's answerless riddle. He should have just said no -- the word was right on the tip of his tongue -- but for some reason, he felt it more agreeable to tell the truth.

"...at times," he murmured at a snail's pace, his mouth unused to forming honesties that weren't in some way meaning to drive whomever he was speaking to away.

She seemed subdued for a moment, like she hadn't really been expecting him to not bark at her to return to the Slytherin dormitories. Snape noticed indolently that her hands were once again trembling at her sides. She caught his detection, clasped her hands into tight fists, and pressed them into the pockets of her dressing gown.

"How often does that happen?" he enquired before the fact that he was pursuing a conversation with the girl completely registered in his brain.

"Some times more than others," she replied softly. Her words fogged in the chilly air, and she bit down on her bottom lip uncertainly.

"Have you been to Pomfrey about it?"

She shook her head. "It's nothing medicine can cure."

He had just begun to wonder what exactly she meant by that when coherency at last caught up with him, and he realised that he was speaking of private matters to an indecently-dressed, doubt-inducing girl. He wouldn't tolerate this from himself -- weariness and inappropriateness were two vastly different entities, and he refused to let one give way to the other. Fatigue was no excuse. Dismissing her with short, brusque nod, he turned his back on her and shut the door to his office completely, himself on one side of it and her on the other.

In the corner, the wormwood bubbled at him warningly -- he'd left it sitting too long. He swore at his own wastefulness, but as he cleaned the ruined beginnings of the Draught of the Living Death from the cauldron, he couldn't help but be a little relieved. 

He wouldn't attempt to make the potion again that day.

* * *

It being the Friday that it was, the school was anarchic with anticipation of the scheduled Quidditch match between Slytherin and Ravenclaw. Malfoy had been discussing nothing else, and during Transfiguration, Professor McGonagall had nearly had a small riot on her hands after Ron Weasley had made a deprecating remark about the ethics (or rather, lack thereof) of the Slytherin team. Nott had retaliated by hurling the textbook he had been meant to turn into a pillow at the flaming-haired boy's head. Potter had leapt at him, and Moon on Potter, and so on and so forth until McGonagall began petrifying people to get them all to calm down. She had been absolutely livid at the display, and had taken fifty points from both Houses -- most of which Professor Snape made up for the Slytherins by asking them simple questions in Potions and rewarding them exceedingly for correct answers.

The second the final bell rang, there was a collective rush from the castle to the Quidditch pitch. People clamoured into their respective Houses' stands, almost all of them occupied in enthusiastic conversation. Gwendolyn found a seat next to Professor Sinistra in the Slytherin stands, and was quite pleased to find that Snape took the seat on the Astronomy teacher's other side, though he didn't look much like he wanted to be there. His eyes were distant, and his face held a lassitude that blended with his grim expression for an air that was almost sorrowful. Gwendolyn tightened her cloak around her shoulders, though she wasn't the least bit cold.

A light flurry of snow continued to fall over the pitch as the spectators waited for the players to emerge. Madam Hooch was already standing in the centre of the field, her broomstick and whistle at the ready, wearing a pair of heavy sand-coloured suede pants beneath her shortened Quidditch referee robes. On the other side of the pitch, Gwendolyn noticed McGonagall hand over a large megaphone to the black boy who had been discussing the demise of Longbottom's toad with the redheaded twins last week. He shook the snowflakes from his dreadlocks, cleared his throat, and held the megaphone to his mouth.

"Oi, s'this thing on?" he asked, and the stands filled with the booming echoes of his voice. McGonagall looked at him disparagingly, and was close enough to him that her voice was also amplified, to a lesser extent.

"It's magical, Jordan, not electric -- it's _always_ on," she sighed at him. He nodded as realisation dawned on him.

"Riiight. Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen -- and Slytherins—"

"Jordan."

"Only joking, Professor. It's Ravenclaw versus Slytherin today, brought to you by Weasleys Wizard Wheezes -- or it will be, someday. Here come the Ravenclaws: Davies, Cornfoot, Ackerly, Fawcett, Li, Quirke, and Chang. More than half the team were reserves last year. So far they've managed to defeat Hufflepuff; let's hope it's a winning streak.

"And now the opposing team that most are opposed to -- I'm not gonna lie to the people, Professor! -- the Slytherins: Pucey, Bole, Derrick, Montague, Warrington, Nott, and Malfoy," Jordan sighed, adding glumly, "Yay."

The Slytherins, Gwendolyn found out, were a very vocal group when it came to Quidditch, swearing up and down whether they were cheering or booing. Hearing Sinistra shout out that the Ravenclaws were a bunch of pansy-assed sods had certainly been a brow-raising incident. "Come on, you gits!" she then yelled at the Slytherins. "Let's show 'em what for!"

Snape glowered at the Astronomy professor's enthusiasm. Gwendolyn admitted that it was amusing to see the normally somewhat haughty Sinistra up in arms over a school Quidditch match.

Pansy and her gaggle were sitting a few rows down, and the pug-faced girl had a look of pure swooning adoration as Malfoy flew past the stands before heading to the centre of the field with the rest of the team. Madam Hooch exchanged a few words with Pucey and Davies as the teams mounted their brooms, and with one piercing shriek from her silver whistle, they were up in the air.

"And they're off!" Jordan exclaimed. "Ravenclaw Chaser Orla Quirke in possession of the Quaffle; she's a second-year, good find of Davies' -- Quirke passes to Chaser Fawcett -- Fawcett dives---ooh! Narrowly dodges a Bludger sent her way by Slytherin wanker -- I mean Beater -- Derrick -- still going strong though -- knocks the Quaffle hurling towards the goals with her broomstick -- RAVENCLAW SCORES! Yes!"

Three-quarters of the stands erupted into cheers, while the Slytherins bellowed obscenities.

"Pucey, you blind fool! No wonder you're failing my class -- how can I expect you to see a single star when you can't even catch a bloody Quaffle?!" Sinistra groused, her hands flitting about as though looking for something to throw at the Keeper. Gwendolyn cracked a smirk, and the Jordan boy continued commentating.

"Slytherin Chaser Nott with the Quaffle -- dodges Cornfoot's Bludger -- dives -- passes up to Chaser Montague -- Montague kicks away Ravenclaw Beater Ackerly -- loops 'round a Bludger -- Davies dives for the shot -- oh, bugger all!"

"Jordan! Language!" McGonagall hissed at him.

"Sorry, Professor. Slytherins score."

"You're damn right, we did!" Sinistra shouted over the exultant cheers coming from the Slytherin stands. Gwendolyn applauded as Warrington took the Quaffle and rocketed toward the sky. She glanced over at Snape, who was watching the match closely, if torpidly. His eyes looked strained, as though he couldn't quite focus on any one thing for long. Sinistra noticed his apathy, and nudged him in the shoulder. "Come on, Severus," she goaded him on, "show a little pride in your House, would you? Gods know we need it right now."

"Team spirit requires a soul. As I do not have one, I'm at a loss," he muttered briskly.

"You're so full of crap," Sinistra glowered at him until she became distracted by Warrington scoring another ten points for Slytherin. "All right," she called out, clapping her hands together furiously. "Put the birdbrains in their place!"

Gwendolyn applauded absently, her mind having temporarily left the match. So that was his first name -- Severus, Severus Snape. What a deliciously serpentine sound to roll about on one's tongue; like iced cinnamon. 

The snow began to fall faster as the moments progressed, coating the hundreds of black-cloaked figures in the stands like icing sugar. The evening sun reflected blindingly on the powder-covered ground, turning the white into gold-dust, framed by a bleeding sunset of brilliant reds and oranges and slate-grey clouds. It would have been beautiful, had it not been such a nuisance. Gwendolyn wondered how Malfoy was ever going to be able to spot the Snitch. She shaded her eyes against the glare and scanned the skies for him -- he was hovering near the Ravenclaw end of the field, close to Chang, their Seeker. They appeared to snapping at each other spitefully, Malfoy's expression cruel, and Chang's caught somewhere between enraged and about to cry.

Madam Hooch's whistle screamed, cutting through the cold air and bringing Gwendolyn back to the game.

"Penalty shot to Ravenclaw," Jordan narrated, "after a repulsively blatant foul by Slytherin—"

"One more remark, Jordan..." McGonagall seethed at the boy, her face so tense it looked like her skin might very well pull the pins out of her hair.

"I know, I know, I'll be doing commentary out of my arse, 'cause that's where the megaphone'll end up....Fawcett takes the shot -- Ravenclaw scores! The game's tied now at twenty-twenty, Li of Ravenclaw in possession of the Quaffle -- knocked off her broom by a Bludger from Bole -- that's gonna leave a mark -- manages a pass to Quirke -- Quirke passes to Fawcett -- Fawcett to -- wait a tic! There go the Seekers! Chang leads Malfoy by a hair, but he's catching up quick on his Nimbus Two Thousand and One. Nice broom, that is. Not as fast as Gryffindor Seeker Harry Potter's Firebolt, which has an acceleration of one-hundred-fifty miles an hour in ten seconds—"

"Oh, that little shite -- that's it—" Sinistra growled, took out her wand, and pointed it at her throat. "_Sonorus_," she muttered, and the next second, her voice was booming over the pitch just as loudly as the commentator's. "LEE JORDAN, NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO ADVERTISE GRYFFINDOR'S BLOODY BROOMSTICK! IF YOU CAN'T STICK TO THE GAME I'LL DO McGONAGALL'S WORK FOR HER AND SHOVE THAT MEGAPHONE SO FAR UP YOUR ARSE YOU'LL BE KNOCKING YOUR TOOTHBRUSH ON IT IN THE MORNING!"

A stunned silence engulfed the pitch -- all the Quidditch players paused mid-air, and McGonagall went slack-jawed -- and then the Slytherin stands gave a sudden hedonistic roar of support to the Astronomy professor's cause. Sinistra smiled, had the decency to blush, took a small bow, and sat down again, pointing her wand once more at her throat. "_Quietus_."

"...right," Jordan continued meekly, his face paling from warm brown to ashy beige. "It's Malfoy and Chang, neck in neck for the Snitch as Fawcett gives a last-ditch effort to sink one more in for Ravenclaw -- Pucey spins and blocks the shot -- Malfoy leading Chang now in a dive -- down -- down -- watch it, Cho, you're gonna cra-- no, you're not! Both Seekers swerve a sharp right -- Bludger tearing their way from Derrick—"

Gwendolyn suddenly found her hand seized in Sinistra's white-knuckle grip. The professor was hanging on to both hers and Snape's hands for dear life at the suspense as Malfoy narrowly ducked the Bludger, which in turn nicked Chang in the back of the head. She jilted off-course for only a fraction of a second -- but it was enough. Malfoy soared past the thunderous cheers of the Slytherin stands, victoriously waving his hand in which was clamped a tiny gold ball. Sinistra jumped up from her seat with a whoop, dragging Gwendolyn and Snape up with her as Jordan gave the final score: "Slytherin wins, one-seventy to twenty." The boy had the sense to take the megaphone away from his mouth before grumbling words not fit for the ears of first-years.

Down on the field, the Slytherins were jumping all over each other in triumph, while the Ravenclaws headed glumly towards the locker rooms. Davies had an arm wrapped around Chang, who was obviously in tears. The stands began to empty, three-quarters of their occupants heading back to the castle, the others spilling out onto the field. Pansy leapt theatrically at Malfoy and planted her lips on his, making him stagger back, though he didn't push her away.

"Well, that's fairly indecent, isn't it?" Sinistra commented at the public display of possession, arching an eyebrow and freeing the hands she'd captured. Snape shot her an acerbic look.

"Oh, yes, much more uncalled for than announcing to the entire school one's desire to shove a piece of commentating equipment up a student's arse," he retorted, and Sinistra couldn't suppress a grin. "I'm ever so happy to amuse you," Snape groused dryly, and the Astronomy professor shook her head.

"Oh no, Severus. I think it's safe to say that you are the least amusing person in all of Hogwarts. But as your criticism proved, _I'm_ rather impressive." Her usual hauteur returned, she stood and made her way down and out of the stands, leaving Snape and Gwendolyn alone.

"You didn't enjoy the match, Professor?" Gwendolyn asked him once Sinistra was well out of earshot. The Potions master sneered at her and ran a hand through his hair, ridding it of the flakes the snowfall had deposited.

"Slytherin won," he said. "Therefore I enjoyed it." With that, he rose and followed Sinistra's path toward the stand's exit, stopping just before he reached the stairs to turn back to his student. "Miss Cross?" She looked at him questioningly. "Unless you plan on becoming a decorative statue for the stands, I recommend you go and celebrate with Mr. Malfoy and the others." Gwendolyn nodded, and he paused, then added, "You have snowflakes in your eyelashes."

She watched him leave without responding, and made no attempt to wipe her eyes of the crystalline flecks of ice that had caught his attention so. She waited until his black-enveloped form was nearly halfway back to the castle before heading down to join the rest of the vivacious Slytherins in their conquering salutations.

* * *

None of the Slytherin students were present at dinner that night, as the victory party in the common room was still hale and hearty. Uther Moon and Butch Hornby had snuck down to the kitchens to inform the house-elves that their table would be eating in the dormitories that night, and to place orders for some extra desserts. The food had appeared on every available surface in the common room promptly at seven, and the students had been feasting and re-enacting the more impressive moments of the Quidditch match ever since, especially Sinistra's volatile little outburst.

Malfoy was seated on the sofa usually reserved for Pansy and her gaggle, with Pansy draped over his lap like a kitschy, clingy blanket. From the things she was doing to his neck and ears, Gwendolyn had a feeling that the girl would continue to act as Malfoy's blanket all the way into his bed that night. It was of no consequence to her -- Malfoy could bed every last member of the female population of the school if he wanted to, as long he didn't try to disclose his accomplishments to her.

"There is one thing I'm curious to know," Gwendolyn said to him as the hour of eleven approached. She had yet to breathe a word about the match, instead choosing to observe the opinions and demonstrations of others.

"What's that?" he asked, craning his head away from Pansy's assaulting mouth. Pansy frowned at him and turned to scowl openly at Gwendolyn for taking Malfoy's focus away from her.

"Chang was bawling by the time the match was over -- that was your doing, was it not?"

Malfoy smirked complacently and nodded once. "It was."

"What was it you said to her?"

"I told her it was no wonder that Diggory bastard died, having to put up with her apish self following him around everywhere. He was either blinded by her hideousness and couldn't see the curse being performed right in front of his face, or he knew what he'd have to go back to and decided it was easier to just let the Dark Lord kill him than it was to look at her. 'You should date Potter,' I said. 'Maybe then the little shit'll stop delaying the inevitable and hand himself over to the Dark Lord on a silver platter, though even as a corpse, the Hufflepuff'd look better. 

"'Imagine,' I said, 'his stupid pretty boy face right now, down in the muck and mire with the worms where he belongs, half-eaten by maggots, his eyes chewed out by rats.' She kept on telling me I was a nasty, evil git, like I wouldn't take that as a compliment coming from her. I told her thank you, said 'Look where your admiration got Diggory. I'd much rather have you insulting me than praising me in my eulogy. I'm glad I repulse you -- everything you touch turns to shit.' The look on her face...oh, it was priceless."

Gwendolyn smirked. She really did relish a good spot of cruelty now and then. "Bravo, Mr. Malfoy. Lucius would be so proud."

"Yeah," Malfoy nodded, pleased, "I reckon he would."

It was then that the hidden door to the common room slid open, and their Head of House stepped inside. The scene quieted quickly as he swept to the centre of the room and looked each of them over with calculating black eyes. "To bed, all of you," he ordered. "You've celebrated enough for one evening."

"But sir—" Pucey protested, his voice low and flat, "—it's a Friday."

"Was that meant to be a point, Mr. Pucey? Because it failed miserably. To bed," Snape repeated, and the students started slothfully down to their dormitories.

"I don't get it," Malfoy groused under his breath. "He doesn't normally enforce curfew on us at all, let alone after we've won a Quidditch match."

"He's been acting strangely for days now," Nott muttered. "Even for him."

The Potions master watched as they all departed, Pansy finally having to unglue herself from Malfoy, and looking that much bitterer because of it. When at last the common room was clear of all bodies excluding his own, Snape sauntered out and back to his private chambers.

He remained awake for some time -- after all, there seemed little sense in sleeping. Perhaps if he could only become exhausted enough, he would black out into sweet oblivion. If he became tired enough, then maybe his brain wouldn't be able to function the necessary amount it would need to in order to dream.

It was on the regal-looking black sofa in front of his fireplace that he read until his eyelids turned to lead and the printed words turned to blurred russet smudges on sepia parchment, and it was there that overtiredness prevailed. He leaned back against the armrest of the sofa, the book collapsed in his lap, and closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he was no longer in his chambers, but in his seat at the High Table in the Great Hall. The book had vanished, and the massive room was empty from tip to toe -- but for one person other than himself.

There was a tap on his shoulder, and he turned to look at the source of the interruption. White skin shrouded a slight, lithe frame that moved to offer him a feminine hand, causing the black satin of her gown to rustle invitingly. Her voice was whisper-soft, and understandably so -- for all he could see of her body, she remained faceless as ever. Nevertheless, he was helpless to indulge her as her breathy words snaked past his ears:

"May I have this dance?" 


	5. Our Ruse

**Part 5 - Our Ruse**

"Baron?"

"Yes, child?"

"The story of your death, is it true?"

"That would depend on which story you've been told. There are countless tales, some versions of the truth, others that have no basis in fact whatsoever. Which one has come across your tender ears?"

"...if that is the case, I would prefer not to say. I'm a bit partial to the mystery of it all; it would be a tragic enigma to spoil."

A small, lucid smile curled at the corners of the spectre's mouth, and he nodded once. "As you wish."

It had been two weeks since the Slytherin-Ravenclaw Quidditch match, and was now nearing the middle of December. This was Gwendolyn's fifth rendezvous with the Bloody Baron, and she had come to cherish their twice-weekly tête-à-têtes almost as much as she did Potions class. Every Tuesday and Friday morning, after she rose, Gwendolyn would head down to the kitchens for a cup of tea from the house-elves, and then meet the Baron at the High Table in the Great Hall. (She had suggested they convene in the kitchens, but he declined, as the house-elves tended to be tremendously frightened of him and would either take ages in preparing her tea, or fix it up too quickly and sloppily. He assured her that the Great Hall was rarely occupied at night with the exception of Peeves, whom he could prevent from telling any professors of her rule-breaking, and so she had agreed. As long as they spoke very quietly so as not to attract Filch or his cat, Mrs. Norris, Gwendolyn was in no danger of getting caught out of bed.)

"You must remember when Professor Snape went to school here," she said. "Please tell me, what was he like?"

"Developed a fancy for your Potions master, have you?"

"Oh yes," she whispered, nodding. "I'm utterly infatuated with him."

The Baron's expression shifted to one of bleak knowledge, but he relented to answering her nevertheless. "Professor Snape was then much as he is today -- quiet, cold and shrewd. He was a boy of nigh painful intelligence, one with no need of the restricted section of the library, as his erudition of the deadly things it contained was already extensive, even at the age of eleven, when he first started at Hogwarts."

"Do go on," Gwendolyn urged him, and the ghost patted her hand lightly, sending delightful slivers of ice through her veins.

"All in good time, Lady Cross," he said softly. "Secrets are best unveiled when given proper thought and savour."

She looked disappointed, but did not pursue the matter further. Beyond the immense oak doors of the Great Hall, there came a loud crash, followed immediately by Filch's croaking voice damning Peeves to hell and worse. The Baron arched a hoary eyebrow and looked purposely at Gwendolyn.

"It's long past time you were leaving," he told her, and she nodded in agreement.

"Yes -- thank you for your companionship and conversation, I do look forward to next time," she murmured hurriedly, starting for the side door.

"As do I, Lady Cross, as do I," the Baron hissed, and she fled the room just as Peeves materialised through the wall at the rear of the room. Filch barrelled in after the poltergeist, Mrs. Norris at his heels. Upon sighting the Slytherin House ghost, Peeves stopped his escape abruptly, skidding to a halt in the air. His small, watery eyes darted between the livid Squib and the scowling blood-stained phantom rapidly, and with the smile of someone who knows they're screwed no matter which direction they take, he gave a nervous giggle and sagged down through the middle of the Hufflepuff table.

* * *

At lunchtime later on that day, Gwendolyn's gaze swung as it always did toward the High Table, to where she had been having a chat with the Bloody Baron not six hours earlier, and she frowned. Professor Snape's seat was as unoccupied as it had been at breakfast, and she was absolutely vexed with the possibility that he might be ill, and that there might be a substitute overseeing his class that day. It was only eight days until the winter holidays began, only four more Potions lessons until she would have to return to London for two weeks to spend the break with her family.

There was no doubt that the Christmas spirit had invaded Hogwarts with a vengeance. A few of the students had planted mistletoe above every doorway that wasn't either undiscovered, hidden half the time, or very much offended by having a sprig of plant charmed onto its frame. In Transfiguration, McGonagall had been teaching them to change bricks into fruitcakes (just a different sort of brick, really), and in Charms the day before, Flitwick had shown them all how to conjure bubble-ornaments and enchanted snow from their wands. Hot cocoa and apple cider were always at the ready during meals, and the 'savage oaf, Hagrid' that Malfoy had for Care of Magical Creatures had already begun hauling ridiculously enormous Christmas trees into the Great Hall.

Pansy was adhering herself to Malfoy more than ever, as the two had indeed consummated what little relationship they had (according to Pansy, things were getting very serious -- according to Malfoy, he was getting very laid on a regular basis). Gwendolyn found the pug-faced girl's presence to be a constant irritant; the prize she put on popularity was the only thing that kept her from separating herself from her friends completely, and even then, the only words to come from her mouth were loud boasts of her most recent tryst in Malfoy's dorm, about which Blaise was now rolling her eyes continuously. Gwendolyn decided that, without Pansy's influence, the redheaded girl might be tolerable. It was a pity her theory would never get the chance to be tested.

"Hey Gwendolyn," Titus Nott called to her, pulling her from her discontent observations. "Pass the fish'n'chips?"

She did, and he mumbled a thanks. Out of her peripheral vision, she vaguely saw Montague give him a disparaging look and a smack upside the head. Next to her, Pansy was eating Malfoy's neck more than she was eating her food; honestly, he looked like he was enjoying her advances less and less every day, which Gwendolyn enjoyed more and more. The sooner that vile excuse for a liaison was over with, the better.

"I don't believe fish can be drowned," Malfoy frowned at her. "And as it is, I think it's dead already."

"What?" She blinked at him, and he nodded at her own plate of fish'n'chips, which she had been drenching in vinegar for the last couple of minutes. "Oh, bugger," she sighed, dabbing at the acidic puddle with her napkin. "At least it absorbs quickly..."

"What's up with you today? You've barely spoken at all. Not that you're a regular chatterbox to begin with, but..." he trailed off, shrugging and ignoring her Briticism, as the slips had become commonplace it was too much bother to keep scolding her for them.

"You haven't exactly been the most available person to talk to these days, either," she pointed out, gesturing vaguely at Pansy, who had at last given up on Malfoy's neck to pore over a beauty article in Witch Weekly with her gaggle. Malfoy's mouth twitched into a smirk.

"Jealous, Cross?"

"As jealous as I am of a mint jelly sandwich." Malfoy made a face, and Gwendolyn nodded. "Precisely." She took a bite of her fish, which had a pleasant bitter tang to it after she'd sopped up the sea of vinegar, and then a sip of her lemonade. "Where do you think Professor Snape's gotten to? He hasn't been at meals today."

"Fucked if I know," he drawled with a sort of mischievous nonchalance. She wasn't buying it.

"Malfoy, you _are_ getting fucked."

"Precisely," he sneered, mocking her.

"You'll be wanting to enlighten me, then?"

"No. It's...a family affair."

"'A family affair'?" she repeated, her tone disbelieving. "You're not related?"

"What tipped you off, the complete lack of resemblance? No, Gwendolyn," he smiled condescendingly, "we're not related. It's a different sort of family -- a very selective one. Why do you care so much, anyway?"

"Colour me curious. And don't patronise me," she muttered, but didn't push the topic. Whatever scant bit of information Malfoy had, it was most likely just that -- a scant bit that he didn't have the forethought to share, because he enjoyed knowing things others didn't, no matter how large or small the matter happened to be. Had he not been exercising that enjoyment at her expense, she would have considered it an intelligent quality for him to possess.

She picked at a couple of chips, but left the remainder of her meal untouched. At a quarter past one, she abandoned Malfoy to Pansy's clutches once more and left the Great Hall for the dungeons. There were other ways of acquiring information than going through Malfoy -- namely, going to see about Snape himself.

She first sought him out at his office, knocking on the door softly a few times and waiting for only a small number of seconds before trying the knob. Finding it locked, she moved on to the Potions classroom, as using _Alohomora_ on a teacher's office, especially when said teacher might have been occupying it, would have been a very inexplicable move indeed.

The closed door to the classroom wasn't locked, and Professor Snape was in fact there, sitting in his chair and looking down at his desk with unseeing eyes that rose dully upon her entrance. His appearance had grown more and more haggard over the last couple of weeks; his dark eyes had equally dark half-circles beneath them, his complexion was even more washed-out than usual, and now he seemed almost ready to fall face-first into his grade book with fatigue. He looked upon Gwendolyn with no small amount of irritation and splayed his hands on his desktop as if to reassert his authority.

"Miss Cross. You're early."

"I thought I might get a head start on today's lesson," she lied, taking her usual seat. "You weren't at lunch. Or breakfast."

"As touching as it is to know my absence causes you distress," he hissed derisively, "it is none of your concern."

"I beg to differ."

"Do you?"

"Yes. Your well-being affects your mood; your mood affects your teaching capabilities; your teaching capabilities affect my education, which concerns me a great deal."

Snape gave her a thin, oily smile. "Touché. I assure you, Miss Cross, that your education is in no danger. I do not make a habit of allowing my personal and professional lives to mingle; therefore my moods are of no consequence to you. Kindly butt out of them."

Briefly, there was a diminutive, playful squint of her eyes. She retrieved a few pieces of parchment, a bottle of ink, and a quill from her rucksack, and began to copy down the day's assignment he had marked on the blackboard. When she had finished, she set the quill aside and steepled her fingers in front of her, staring at him with a pensive look, which he matched with a scowl.

"What?" he demanded, and she shrugged.

"I'm bored, and while it is not my wish to insult whatever creatures fill the jars lining your walls, you are the most interesting specimen in this room to observe."

Snape said nothing, but narrowed his eyes at her intently for a short moment before pretending to be absorbed in the pseudo-security blanket of his grade book. Gwendolyn sighed, rose from her chair, and busied herself with inspecting the aforementioned creature-filled jars. Some were filled with large, grotesque snails that left thick trails of orange slime around the glass. Others contained pickled purple toads floating in murky fluid, and others still contained not creatures, but the parts of creatures, like raven feet and grey clumps of brain matter, rat tails and a jar of dragon tongues. It was like a candy shop for mad scientists.

She worked her way around the room, left to back to right, until she came to the front of the room, stopped and knelt in front of his desk, her chin propped up on her arms, her arms on the desktop.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, his lip curling back in annoyance.

"Studying you," she answered artlessly.

"I am not a laboratory rat at your disposal," he snapped, leaning back in his chair in an attempt to distance his face from hers. "Return to your seat at once."

Gwendolyn paid no mind to his order. "I don't believe you are. What is it about my curiosity that offends you so?"

Snape opened his mouth to speak, but his extensive vocabulary was completely unforthcoming. What could he possibly have said that wouldn't have sounded preposterous or needlessly dramatic to a sixteen-year-old girl who knew next to nothing of his life? More than that -- what could he have told her that wouldn't just succeed in making her more engrossed with him?

In the end, he went for the most anaemic, vague answer he was accustomed to giving: "It's no business of yours what offends me. Take your seat."

This time, she listened, and made her way back to her table without protest. Not a moment later, the end of lunch bell rang piercingly throughout the school, and but a few minutes after that, the rest of the Potions class began to file into the room one at a time. Malfoy slid into his chair next to her, an arrogant smirk on his face.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked.

She flouted his scorn, and the start of class bell rang, cutting off any further interrogating comments that were stinging the tip of the boy's tongue.

Snape took attendance before addressing the class, and Nott's hand flew into the air. The Potions master answered without calling on him, as Nott had been asking the same question at the beginning of every Potions class for the last two weeks.

"No, Mr. Nott, this will not be a potion that requires Miss Cross to disrobe herself," he sighed.

The few members of the class that still found the joke amusing snickered quietly as Nott muttered obscenities beneath his breath. Gwendolyn rolled her eyes. Boys.

The day's potion was abnormally simple -- just a basic mix-and-boil sleep-aid potion meant to induce drowsiness (a slightly more complicated version of hot milk) that even Longbottom was able to manage without much trouble. Throughout the hour, Snape glided between the rows as he always did, marking things down in his grade book, bestowing praise and insults as he saw fit. For all that he tried to mask it, his movements were strained, as though merely walking was an effort he'd have rather not been making. Gwendolyn took this information in watchfully. As he passed the table she shared with Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle, he flinched visibly, his right hand hovering near his left arm for a split-second before he forced it back down to his side. In the same instant, his expression turned from one of fatigue to one of grave understanding, and he swept back to the front of the room and dropped his grade book on his desk with a loud crack that made the majority of the class give a started jump.

"Homework is one roll of parchment on the addictiveness of sleeping potions," he muttered quickly. "Class dismissed. Now."

Gwendolyn's eyes scanned her classmates' faces for their reactions to this sudden twist in their professor's personality; a look of confusion was predominant on most of pupils, but not all. Potter, Granger, and Weasley were exchanging earnest glances, and Malfoy had a small, knowing smirk curling up at the corners of his mouth.

She hastily gathered up her things, the gears already spinning in her head -- what were these secret glances her four peers were privy to, and what did they have to do with the Potions master?

He ushered them all out into the hallway. After ensuring that his students were all well on their way to their next classes, Snape slipped into his office, and shut and locked the door. His black cloak swept around him like a matador's flag as he pulled it on, then took out his wand.

"_Masqmordre_," he hissed, and something smooth and bone-white slid out from the wand's tip and hovered for a split-second before he snatched it out of the air and placed it over his face. He took a pinch of glittering powder from a decanter on his desk, and pointed his wand at the fireplace occupying the back wall of the room. "_Incendio_." Tossing the powder into the flames, he crouched low and stepped into fire. "Snape Estate," he said clearly, and the blaze obliged him, pulling him up through the flue system.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry had many a spell placed upon it to prevent those not welcome from entering. One could neither come nor go by Apparation, and the Floo Network worked only one way, meaning that if one needed to get anywhere outside of the Hogwarts grounds in a hurry, they would have to take a roundabout route, stopping one place before Disapparating to the next.

As it was nearly half-past two in the afternoon, it would be too risky to travel by flue to anywhere other than his own estate -- having a Death Eater pop out of one's fireplace would have caused much unnecessary mêlée. It took longer, but not much, and within a couple of minutes he was undulating out of the Network and into his sitting room, nearly crashing into one of the house-elves, Pucci, who had been dusting the mantle and now let out a horrified shriek to find his master suddenly in his presence -- the work of house-elves was meant to be done in shadow, never seen nor heard, and Pucci had already begun to punish himself, though it was no fault of his own that he had been spotted, by whacking himself in the head with a metal poker.

"Pucci is sorry, Master! Pucci is not meaning to be seen, no, no! Pucci is not meaning to displease his master!"

Snape ignored the prattling, self-flagellating greyish-green creature and glanced about the room momentarily. The Snape Estate was, for all intents and purposes, a waste of space. It was large -- not as large as Malfoy Manor, but still quite a good size -- and was in use only two months out of the year. The only occupants the other ten months were the staff of house-elves, all of whom shared the servants' quarters, all of whom cleaned every room daily whether it needed it or not.

"Please forgive Pucci, Master! Oh please, oh please!" the little elf whinged on.

"Shut up," his master snapped, and Pucci's damp eyes widened as Snape disappeared once more with a small crack of air where before there had been his body.

He Apparated into what looked to be a dank, unpromising cave mouth. Stalagmites and stalactites spiked out from the ground and ceiling like teeth, and the wind snarled and howled through the fissures in the rock. The only thing Snape could think of were the underground caverns of Gringott's Bank, though that couldn't have been right.

"Ah, Severus...how good of you to join us," a cold, slippery voice echoed throughout the cave.

"I apologise, my Lord," Snape said quietly, his head bowed in obedience. He made no attempt at an excuse for his tardiness -- Lord Voldemort had little patience for meaningless explanations.

"Of course you do," Voldemort hissed, dismissing Snape's bow with a way of his hand and turning in a slow circle, facing each of the Death Eaters in turn. "I suppose you're all wondering why I've summoned you here, and in the daytime, no less..."

There was a hushed, affirmative murmur among the circle, and a few emphatic nods.

Voldemort continued: "Ah, Christmastime," he smiled, traces of a forked tongue slithering between his thin lips. "My favourite time of the year. Such joy...such hope...such a delightful spike in the percentage of Muggle suicides..." Some of the Death Eaters snickered. "Christmastime," he repeated. "A time for gifts, for cheer....For thirteen years I was without either..." The snickering stopped. "...but I don't believe I need to remind you all of that, do I?"

One of the Death Eaters stepped forward, and Snape recognised the man's gruffly accented voice as that belonging to Ivan Ulianov.

"Do tell us, my Lord, however we can relieve that burden from your shoulders," he said, his glassy blue eyes wide and glittering madly.

Voldemort's flat nostrils flared in brief annoyance, but he contained it well. Perhaps a display of the Christmas spirit.

"As it has been so long, I believe a...celebration...is in order....Invite all of London, if you will, Muggle and Ministry alike. For Christmas this year, I wish for but one gift..." 

There was an almost palpable shiver of anticipation within and around the circle, and Snape, too, found himself waiting with bated breath for the Dark Lord to provide his dramatic finish.

"Red and green, my loyal Death Eaters...I want you to paint London in seasonal decoration; blood-red, and serpent-green."

* * *

He crawled into his bed that night, even more achy and weary than he had been in the last few weeks. Lord Voldemort's summoning had not taken long, but by the time Snape had returned to Hogwarts after taking the Floo Network from his estate to the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, and then walking back up to the school, he had already missed the majority of his fifth-period class. He'd given the perplexed third-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs their homework assignment and dourly dismissed them early, as there was no point in forcing them to remain there when he hadn't time to teach them anything.

The inconveniently shortened class had given him a chance to go to Dumbledore about the orders the Dark Lord had distributed, and the headmaster listened to him with a solemn expression that always made Snape feel as though his work was doing more harm than it was good.

"I shall alert the Ministry at once," the aged wizard had told him, and then, much to Snape's exasperation, enquired about the Potions master's welfare. "Severus," he'd called, just as Snape was crossing the threshold out of the rounded office, "are you certain you're all right? I will not lie to you -- you don't look well. If you ever wish to stop..." he'd trailed off, punctuating his words with a small sigh of futility.

Snape had spoken the words that Dumbledore's mind had led to.

"I could never stop, even if I wanted to."

"I know," the old man sighed again, his blue eyes dimming, showing his age. "I know."

Now, Snape could scarcely bring himself to care about the dreams as his head sank into the feather pillow, and he closed his heavy eyes. Of course, they came -- he couldn't be sure that they would ever stop -- though this time, when she clawed at his back, her hands came back stained blood-red, and this time, her gown hadn't a trace of black; instead, it was a brilliant serpent-green.

* * *

The week leading up to the winter holidays was uneventful, in true calm-before-the-storm fashion. Classes had, for the most part, been relatively ordinary, almost leaning toward lax. In Potions, Snape continued to give them as much work as ever, though his own somnolent demeanour had spread to his surroundings, giving the class a sleepy, sombre atmosphere not unlike that of an overlong church sermon.

Gwendolyn couldn't find it in herself to so much as smirk the Saturday she and many others would be leaving the castle on the Hogwarts Express. She floated through the morning feeling more like a ghost than she had since she'd first set eyes on her Potions professor, and Malfoy had commented several times on how dead she seemed.

"You look like a corpse," he informed her for the third time that day as they approached the wall entrance to the Slytherin common room after breakfast. "Morningstar," he told it, and the stone door slid open, allowing them to enter.

"Thanks ever so much," Gwendolyn muttered, her voice lacking any evidence of emotion.

"You're acting like one, too," Malfoy kept on. "Did you die and forget to leave your body or something?"

"Were that but true."

He gave a little snort and slouched down into one of the vacant chairs near the fireplace, and Gwendolyn draped herself over the seat opposite him. All around them, people were bustling this way and that, some hauling trunks, others attempting to coerce their pets into carrying cases. Most of those returning to London by train were already dressed in Muggle clothes, as it was forbidden to wear their school robes once they reached the Muggle side of King's Cross Station and too much bother to change on the Express.

Though she was definitely not looking forward to a two week deprival from Professor Snape, Gwendolyn had to admit that she was the slightest bit excited by the prospect of the ride from Hogsmeade to London. She adored trains. The one going from New York City to Redville Station (Redville was the nearest wizarding town to Asgarth -- due to America's sheer size, there were quite a few all-wizarding villages throughout the country, compared to Great Britain's one) had been a monstrous black steam-engine, though of course it didn't run on steam at all. There was also a large four-mast ship that travelled from Lake Superior to Lake Skrymir (an Unplottable, of course), and yet another train that came in from North Carolina.

Hilary Snoad, a sixth-year prefect, struggled past them with her small wooden cedar chest. She had charmed it to walk, but probably would have had more luck dragging it -- it was digging its clawed feet obstinately into the stone floor, resisting her every tug to get it to follow her. Finally, she gave up and sprawled exhaustedly onto one of the sofas, leaving the cedar chest to gloat and wheeze out a snigger.

"Shoddy Swedish craftsmanship..." she groused under her breath, and glanced up at Gwendolyn and Malfoy. "You two might want to get a move on. We leave in half an hour."

The two fifth-years arched an eyebrow at each other and shrugged. They rose sluggishly and headed down to their dormitories, leaving Hilary Snoad to tackle the cedar chest, which was now attempting to scuttle under the other sofa to hide.

Gwendolyn opened the door to the room she shared with Pansy and her gaggle to find the former bent over her trunk and muttering something incoherent that sounded suspiciously like an incantation.

"What are you doing?"

Pansy stiffened momentarily, then turned. The smile she flashed was tooth-ache sweet. She rose slowly, revealing a shabby-looking blackish-brown cat with unnaturally blue eyes sitting on the top of Gwendolyn's trunk.

"Millicent's cat wandered in here and I was giving it a scratch. Why? Is there a problem?"

"No," Gwendolyn matched her tone. "Not at all. Excuse me."

Pansy moved, taking the cat with her, and Gwendolyn pulled out her wand, pointed it at the trunk, and gave it a soft swish-and-flick. "_Wingardium Leviosa_," she said, and the trunk obeyed, rising a few feet in the air until it levitated at chest-level. There was a quiet mewl from behind her bed curtains, and Morgaine emerged, leapt onto the trunk and proceeded to ride it peacefully as Gwendolyn guided it out of the room with her wand, managing to bump the doorframe only twice before she managed to get it through the threshold. Casting one last dubious look at Pansy, she shut the door and headed for the common room, where Malfoy had attached his trunk to his broomstick and was gliding between the hanging lamps near the ceiling.

Snoad had lassoed her cedar chest with a coil of rope from her wand, and had enlisted Crabbe to haul it up to the Main Hall. The cedar chest whimpered in protest, its feet scuffing against the stone floor as it was towed by its new leash. Goyle had stacked both his and Crabbe's trunks one on top of the other, and was carrying both with relative ease -- one of the perks of being built like a brick shithouse. Montague and Nott had transfigured wheels onto their trunks, and were currently riding them like Muggle skateboards down the dungeon corridors, while Blaise, Tracey, and Constance were trying to shape theirs into some sort of trolley form.

One way or another, they all managed to make it up to the Main Hall, which was no less chaotic than the common room had been. McGonagall, Hooch, and Sinistra were all trying to form some semblance of order, and each looked about ready to rip out their hair from it.

"Malfoy, get down here this instant before that thing falls and you break someone's neck!" McGonagall shouted at the ceiling, waving a scolding finger in the air. "Finnigan, get that cat back in its basket! Crabbe, control your trunk!"

"It ain't mine!" Crabbe protested.

"I don't care whose it is, Crabbe, just keep it under control!"

"Ouch!" Sinistra yelped as both her and Montague ended up sprawled on the floor after a fender-bender from his skate-trunk. "You are _so_ serving a detention for that when you get back, Rufus Montague! Creevey, get that bloody camera out of my face or Jordan and his megaphone will look like a lover's caress compared to what I'll do to you..."

"Weasley!" McGonagall screeched. "Don't you dare feed those first-years that -- that -- whatever that is! Go on, get out of here -- you're not even leaving!"

"Son of a bitch!"

"McMillan! Language!"

"Crabbe's trunk bit me!"

"It ain't my trunk!"

"Oh, of all the buggery, bollocky—"

"Hooch! Language!"

"Jordan! Five points from Gryffindor!"

"What? Aww, sh—"

"Jordan."

"—ucks."

"Oi, Boot, pull your socks up!"

Terry Boot dropped to the floor just as Parker Stebbins aimed a curse at Roger Davies standing behind him, who grinned and rolled out of the way just in the knick of time. The curse hit the wall, which immediately began sprouting fat pink-and-brown-spotted mushrooms. He was just about to counter-curse when—

"YOU DO NOT PLAY TAG WITH HEXES, STEBBINS! AND DAVIES! Fifteen points from both Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw!"

—McGonagall spoke up.

"Really, Professor, you've got to learn how to speak your mind."

"Don't tempt me, Jordan..."

Hands flew to cover up ears as Hooch's whistle shrieked for ten seconds straight. When at last she'd finished, all was silent. (Mass deafness was high on the list of probable reasons why.) Smiling pleasantly, she opened the front doors and gestured toward the drive that led down to the entrance gates, and following that, to Hogsmeade. At least a hundred black carriages were already waiting for them, none with neither horses nor drivers.

"Outside, all of you," she ordered. "Come on, hurry up, arses and elbows, people..."

Slowly but surely, the few hundred students made their way out of the castle and began to pile into the carriages six at a time. Gwendolyn nestled her trunk securely in the boot of one carriage, Malfoy's next to hers, Crabbe's and Goyle's on top of theirs, and Pansy's and Blaise's on theirs. Gwendolyn took a window seat next to Goyle, while Pansy was once again nearly on Malfoy's lap. After a few minutes, the carriage started up of its own accord and began the short trip from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade.

"I can't believe we're going to separated for two weeks!" Pansy moaned, resting her head on Malfoy's shoulder with a melancholy grimace.

"Don't be dramatic," the blond boy mumbled, staring out at the lazily passing scenery -- anything to distract himself from his girlfriend's incessant carping.

"Will you miss me?"

"He'll miss your crotch," Gwendolyn muttered under her breath. Pansy didn't catch the remark, but Malfoy and Blaise certainly did, and snickered appreciatively.

"What's so funny?" the pug-faced girl snapped, glaring at each of them in turn.

"Don't worry about it," Malfoy told her, and she sat back against her seat and sulked the remainder of the way to the train station.

By the time they had loaded their luggage onto the Hogwarts Express, Gwendolyn had had enough. Six hours trapped in a compartment with Parkinson's constant simpering? She'd crack for sure.

The Granger girl's box was sure to be filled with vacancies, as she was homeward bound sans Potter and Weasley. It would give Gwendolyn a chance to ask her about Professor Snape's baulking the week before, as Malfoy had continued to wallow in secrecy whenever she approached him about the incident. He probably wouldn't be very understanding of her newfound camaraderie with a Mudblood, either, and after weighing her options, Gwendolyn decided that his friendship could still prove to be far more beneficial to her cause than a mere discussion with a haughty Gryffindor. She found an empty seat with Nott and Montague, who were more than content to share.

"Do you both live in London?" she asked them as the train started chugging along toward King's Cross. They were good enough to share their compartment with her; she could at least provide polite conversation.

"I do," Nott spoke up. "Rufus lives in Cambridgeshire. You?"

"London. Conspiritore Alley."

"Yeah? I'm right next to you -- Craft Alley. It's not quite as posh, but it's a stone's throw away from Knockturn Alley."

"Knockturn Alley?"

"The street next to Diagon Alley. It's absolutely packed with Dark Arts stores. They've got the most wicked things there -- I'll have to take you sometime."

A small, iniquitous smile curled at the corners of Gwendolyn's mouth. "I'd like that."

The rest of the trip was actually quite pleasant. Nott's biting, sarcastic wit reminded her of Malfoy's, though it was nowhere near as conceited. When Casca Warrington joined their compartment, Gwendolyn found that the three Chasers were the Slytherin equivalent to the Weasley twins and Lee Jordan, and the boys had had a grand time regaling their tales of not-so-harmless mischief-making and placing bets to see who could get the girl laughing first -- something they'd never seen her do in her month at Hogwarts. None of them ended up winning, but Nott ended up the victor, as he'd gotten a sort of thrilled humming sound that he personally decided passed for a laugh.

"In second year, Rufus and me snuck down to the kitchens and put a laxative charm on the owl feed. It brought a glorious new meaning to the word 'shitstorm'," Warrington grinned slyly, and Montague sniggered at the memory.

"You remember the Dungbombs in Sprout's office?"

"How could I forget -- it earned us a weeks' worth of detentions."

"I still say that was a crock. All those plants stuffing up that tiny little room -- it already smelled like manure. We were just helping to...fertilise things a bit more thoroughly. You understand, eh, Gwendolyn?"

"Oh yes, completely," she said, wholly sincere. "I can't imagine why she was ungrateful."

"Ah, at last," Warrington beamed, looping an arm around Gwendolyn's shoulders and giving her a quick squeeze. "Someone who actually appreciates our helpful tendencies."

She couldn't help but ask -- "You haven't done anything to Professor Snape yet, have you?"

"Snape?" Nott blinked at her as though she were daft. "Hell no. We know better."

She frowned. "What do you mean by that?"

The door to their compartment slid open quite suddenly, as though it had been carefully timed to do so at that exact moment of gauche silence. A cheerful-looking witch smiled broadly at the four Slytherins from beyond the threshold.

"Anything off the trolley, dears?" she asked them, and the boys immediately detoured Gwendolyn's question in favour of emptying their pockets of sickles to stuff them with sweets. Gwendolyn let out an inaudible sigh and ordered a pumpkin juice. Perhaps Death simply wasn't in the cards tonight, though she had a feeling Trelawney would be jumping at the chance to disagree.

The train rounded a bend, and Gwendolyn watched the scenery fade as the sun began to set, baking the sky in yellows and muted blues. Perhaps not in the cards tonight, but the friendly thing about Death was that he could be like a surprise visit from a dear neighbour -- you never see him coming, but he may still be walking, walking just around the corner from your home. 


	6. How Doth the Little Crocodile...

**Part 6 - How Doth the Little Crocodile...**

It was early in the night by the time the Hogwarts Express pulled up to King's Cross Station. Platform nine and three-quarters was predictably packed with the friends and relatives of the de-boarding students, some helping to haul trunks and animals toward the Muggle side, others clogging up the flow by stopping to greet and hug whomever it was they were collecting.

Gwendolyn exited the train behind Warrington and scanned the crowd. Her mother was easy to pick out amongst the commotion. Gretchen Cross was a tall woman who, at thirty-six, still had the sort of figure than made younger women jealous. Her hair was chin-length and coppery brown, her green eyes were pale and clear. It was as though these traits had been dimmed when they had been passed on to her daughter, tarnished somehow by her husband's darker appearance.

At the moment, Mrs. Cross appeared to be speaking pleasantly with an attractive, proud-looking couple, both with pale hair and blue-grey eyes. Gwendolyn didn't need to be introduced to them to know who they were -- the family resemblance was unmistakable.

The infamous Lucius Malfoy was exactly as she had pictured him: Tall, distinguished, and wickedly handsome with a cold, ruthless smile. The woman on his arm matched Mrs. Cross in height, and her appearance reflected her husband's to such a great extent that they could have probably gotten away with claiming to be brother and sister.

Gwendolyn retrieved her trunk from the baggage compartment and placed it on one of the trolleys that would have to be used to avoid conspicuousness on the Muggle side of the station, and set Morgaine (who had made quite a huff when she'd been ordered into her cat carrier after settling in on the train) on top of it before heading over to meet her mother and the Malfoys.

"Gwendolyn, there you are," Mrs. Cross said upon her arrival, smiling warmly. Mr. Malfoy looked at her intently, his cool eyes roving over her as if she were a bit of meat to be carefully scrutinised and inspected.

"Ah, so this is the young lady we've heard so much about. Lucius Malfoy," he held out a hand, and when Gwendolyn moved to shake it, he raised it to kiss her fingers charmingly. "And my wife," he gestured to the woman on his arm, who smirked haughtily, "Narcissa. Our son Draco has written of you in his letters home."

"Yes, sir," Gwendolyn nodded politely. "Draco and I have become excellent friends. He speaks often of you, and very highly at that. It's lovely to finally make your acquaintance."

"A shared sentiment," Mrs. Malfoy smiled with faux graciousness just as her son arrived, his own trunk and broomstick on a trolley, and a pink flush on his lips from where Pansy had obviously taken her time in saying good-bye to him.

"Hello Father, Mother," he greeted them sharply. Gwendolyn noticed that, if it were possible, Malfoy seemed to look even more arrogant than usual. Paternal emulation at its finest. He looked at her mother questioningly.

"Draco Malfoy," Gwendolyn introduced them, "Gretchen Cross; my mother."

He seemed almost perplexed by the prospect -- Gwendolyn very rarely ever mentioned her parents, and to have one of them so suddenly in the flesh must have been something of a queer shock to him. Still, he took her hand and kissed it in the same manner as his father had kissed Gwendolyn's hand. "Pleased to meet you."

"The pleasure is mine," Mrs. Cross smiled, then sobered in a show of courteous regret. "Gwendolyn and I must be leaving now, I'm afraid. My husband is coming home tonight, and it wouldn't do at all if his women weren't there to properly receive him."

"Yes," Mr. Malfoy nodded. "We should be heading home as well. Come along, Draco."

The five started toward the barrier between the Muggle and magical platforms, each walking easily through it without hesitation, the Malfoys, and then the Crosses. Weaving through the hoards of Muggles on holiday, all of them scowled disdainfully until they were outside, where a light sprinkling of snow had begun to fall. Two elegant-looking black cars were waiting on the street: One, the Malfoys' Rolls Royce; the other, the Crosses' Mercedes. Both families climbed into their respective automobiles while their chauffeurs loaded trunks into boots. Draco gave a discreet nod of good-bye to Gwendolyn, which she returned, before following his mother into the expensive car.

"Home," Mrs. Cross told the driver once both she and her daughter were seated. "How do you like Hogwarts?" she asked Gwendolyn.

"It's fabulous. I'm very much enjoying it," the girl answered, relaxing deep into the leather-upholstered backseat and half-closing her eyes. She wasn't quite sure why, but suddenly she felt exceedingly sleepy.

"Good, good."

"Is Daddy really going to be home tonight?"

"To the best of my knowledge, yes. He pulled some strings with the Ministry -- they approved his request to stay home for the holidays."

"Did they? Bloody magnificent! I can't wait to see him."

"'Bloody magnificent'?" her mother repeated. "Dear, I know you've been at school for the last month, but you _are_ still American, you know."

Gwendolyn hmphed indignantly. "It's a divine accent to acquire. You know very well how easily I pick things like this up."

"Alas, yes, I do."

They drove through the white and oil-black streets of London slowly, though the trip was cut in half by the enchanted car's ability to squeeze through tight gaps and crevices, and somehow always remain at the head of the line at stoplights. Gwendolyn took in her surroundings with interest -- she hadn't gotten to see much of the city, as she'd had to leave for Hogwarts almost immediately upon arriving at her mother's insistence that she not fall a single day behind in school.

They came to a shifty-looking neighbourhood, and turned left down an alleyway that was littered with rotting wooden crates and rubbish. Their driver took out his wand and pointed it at the dead-end brick wall of the street, which was blocked by a large trash receptacle that was filled to the brim with filth. "_Coronus_," he mumbled, and the receptacle slid to the side, allowing the Mercedes to pass through the wall and into Conspiritore Alley.

There were roughly fifty wizarding streets scattered throughout London, some, like Diagon and Knockturn Alleys, used for commerce, and others, like Conspiritore and Craft, used for personal residences. Each spider-webbed out from the central point of England's magical community -- the Ministry of Magic, located, aptly enough, at number ten Magic Alley. The inhabitants of Conspiritore Alley were mainly the families of the upper-ranks Ministry officials, and their wealth was reflected in the homes that lined the crooked, winding street.

The houses were stacked next to each other in much the same way as flats in Muggle London, though they weren't uniformed as such in the least, varying in styles and shapes as though someone had taken random bits of homes from all over the world and glued them together. Their only shared trait was that each spared little to no expense in extravagance from witches and wizards building their mansions up instead of out. Gwendolyn had only ever been inside number nine Conspiritore Alley once before she'd been sent off to school, and after a month, looking at it now was almost like seeing it for the first time.

A menacing iron fence and gate framed a decent-sized yard of rich green grass that was extremely well-kempt and half-frosted with snow. In the centre was a large weeping willow tree, barren and tearless from winter. Pale pink rose bushes lined the snaking front walk, and the house itself was suffocated in ivy, beneath which hints of red brick could be seen peeping out and gasping for air. A castle-esque turret jutted out from the west side of the house on the third floor -- Gwendolyn's room. The gauzy ecru curtains in the round window rustled as if to welcome her as she peered curiously up at them.

The front gate opened, and the driver parked the car before coming 'round to open the door for Gwendolyn and her mother. Gwendolyn heard a slam, and turned to see something small and vividly green scurrying towards them, shivering (as it was wearing but a large crocheted doily that was meant to serve as a shawl, and a hankie wrapped around its waist in a makeshift skirt) and panting nervously.

"Welcome home, Misses!" the privileged public house-elf greeted them, smiling fretfully. "Welcome home! Dippy is ever so happy you is home, Miss," Dippy said to Gwendolyn, "ever so happy!"

The chauffeur pulled Gwendolyn's trunk from the boot of the car, and then Morgaine, still the cat-carrier, from the backseat. Dippy paled at the sight of the cat, and inched away as it growled hungrily. To a finicky cat that hadn't eaten since breakfast, a house-elf probably looked like a succulent veal cutlet.

"Hello, Dippy," Gwendolyn responded, following the elf, her mother, and the driver up the front walk to the door. "How are you enjoying England?"

"Dippy is liking it all right. Dippy is very grateful that Misses are bringing her along, instead of...of..." The little thing shuddered involuntarily, and spoke the next word in a high, squeaky whisper. "...clothes."

"Are you feeling well, dear?" Mrs. Cross asked her daughter, ignoring Dippy.

"Yes, fine. Why?"

"You've been home for over thirty seconds and you haven't asked me who I've met at work yet."

"Oh. Well...I've met someone, you see. The Bloody Baron -- he's my House's ghost, and he's terribly fascinating."

"Thank the gods for that. I was beginning to think you'd come down with the plague. Good. Perhaps now you'll let me leave my work where it belongs -- at work."

"Perhaps."

They entered the great house, and Gwendolyn's eyes widened slightly. The last time she'd seen it, it had been mostly bare hardwood floors and draperies. Now that all of their things had been moved in, it was resplendent. On the wall opposite the foyer hung an enormous silver-framed mirror, and in front of that, a mahogany table on which sat a hand-painted vase overflowing with Queen Anne's lace and delicate, pale roses. To the left was the sitting room, adorned with her mother's nautical yet feminine tastes of ocean green and creamy sand; to the right, the parlour, outfitted in the deeper tones preferred by her father.

Dippy took their cloaks, the driver disappeared to put the trunk and Morgaine upstairs, and Gwendolyn contented herself with exploring each room at length while Mrs. Cross went up to the room she shared with her husband to change. Most everything had come from their home in New York, a great number of them antiques and family heirlooms, though they were a few new additions to keep up with modern interior fashions. The next floor up contained her father's library and study, and the floor above that held the bedrooms.

Gwendolyn's room didn't look much different than it had in New York. It was rounder, certainly, and her floor was no longer carpeted, but dark, polished wood. The walls were whipped-butter-white, her furniture still cherry-stained. The sheets on her bed were still the same cranberry colour she'd left them, and everything had been arranged in much the same way as before, right down to the way her dolls had been organised on top of the wooden chest sitting at the foot of her bed. A window seat upholstered to match her bedsheets held her various old-fashioned stuffed animals. Near that was her armoire, and next to that, the doors to her closet, the clothing within which had been ordered by colour.

Morgaine, trapped in her cat-carrier on the bed, yowled resentfully to be let out.

"All right, all right. Go down to the kitchen and Dippy will give you a saucer of cream and some fish," Gwendolyn told the cat. "And do _not_ try to eat her when she does, understand?"

Freed at last, Morgaine sniffed contemptuously and held her tail high in the air as she sauntered out of the room. Gwendolyn shut the door behind her and picked up the Transylvanian doll she'd been missing. Its tiny fangs glinted in light of the oil lamp sconces on the walls, and its eyes held a look of recollection as if absorbing the changes in its owner's appearance since it had seen her last. Gwendolyn ran a hand over the doll's raven hair and smiled a bit when the others watched jealously.

There was a loud, shrill squeal from downstairs, and for a moment Gwendolyn thought that Morgaine had indeed chosen Dippy to be her dinner until she heard another deeper, masculine voice -- her father was home.

With total disregard of proper etiquette, she set the doll on her bed and raced downstairs, skipping the last bottom three steps entirely. Dippy had just taken Mr. Cross's cloak with an ear-to-ear grin, and he let out a short grunt when his daughter ran into his arms for a tackling hug, which he returned.

"Did you miss me, _mon enfant fou_?" he asked when she'd finally pulled away.

"According to her," a soft, amused voice floated down from the stairs, "your being home tonight is 'bloody magnificent'. And I can't say I disagree."

He glanced up to see his wife, and his smile widened ten-fold. Gwendolyn stood back and watched with some wonderment the non-verbal exchange between them. Even after eighteen years of marriage, her parents were still very much in love. It was almost like a fairy tale, for they had met in the most romantic of ways: By sheer, dumb luck. Stephen Cross had been five years Gretchen Hughes' senior when they were both in Loki House at Asgarth, and neither had paid so much as a glance to each other during the two years they were there together. They didn't actually meet until the year after Gretchen had graduated. Both shared an interest in the sea, and one day, while gillyweed-diving among a shipwreck, they passed each other on the starboard side. It was love at first sight. "I thought I'd found one of Odysseus' sirens," her father had said when telling Gwendolyn of the story four years later. "We were married within a week, and less than a year later, you were born."

Gwendolyn could easily see how her mother had become so quickly smitten with him. Her father was tall and quite handsome, with a rich olive complexion, dark brown hair that had yet to grey with age, and deeply set hazel eyes -- the very embodiment of the 'mysterious stranger' pigeonhole.

"How are you?" Mrs. Cross asked her husband after kissing him hello.

"Famished. Has Dippy started on dinner yet?"

A round green face poked through the doorway from the dining hall. "Dippy is finished, Sir and Misses! Dippy is finished!"

"Splendid. Shall we, then?"

Dinner that night was lamb -- Gwendolyn's favourite -- mashed potatoes with gravy, and asparagus in Hollandaise sauce. The conversation was animated, and its topics many. Mr. Cross asked Gwendolyn about Hogwarts and its environs, what her classes were like, and if there were any especially horrible teachers. She'd told him no, though Filch the caretaker and his cat Mrs. Norris were both crusty, cranky old sods that were most out-of-place in a castle filled with students.

"What about your best class -- do you still enjoy history?"

"I do, but I much prefer Potions now. Professor Snape's a brilliant teacher."

Her father's eyes narrowed very slightly at the name, but he smiled the squint away, and her mother spoke up.

"Oh, that reminds me -- I ran into the Malfoys at King's Cross, and their son, Draco. Apparently he and Gwendolyn have become quite close." Her tone was half-mischievous, half-leery.

Mr. Cross arched an eyebrow. "Is that so?"

Gwendolyn fought the urge to roll her eyes in the most juvenile of ways. "Yes," she said pointedly. "We're _friends_. And there's certainly no desire to become anything more. Regardless, he's dating Pansy Parkinson. They're absolutely sickening to watch, though it probably doesn't help that I can't stand the girl." She didn't go further than that in favour of good taste. That, and she had just caught the odd twist in conversation that had brought them to discussing the Malfoys -- Professor Snape had been what reminded her mother of the tow-headed family, and she wondered what sort of connection the two could possibly have, other than the fact that Malfoy was Snape's most favoured student.

After dessert -- raspberry chocolate cheesecake -- and a cup of after-dinner coffee, her parents began to focus more on each other than they did her, and she took that as her cue to excuse herself. She headed upstairs to the library and skimmed over the titles, running her hand along the leather book bindings. She stopped when she came to _Alice Through the Looking Glass_, pulled it from its place, and curled up on the sofa in front of the unlit fireplace to read.

She had met Mr. Dodgson once in a book store, not long after she had met Death. He was already fantastically old, and had a long beard like Dumbledore's that was yellow-white in colour. His robes at the time had been maroon, and on them were glittering little teapots and mice. She hadn't any idea who he was when she first spoke to him, but those robes had simply been too spellbinding for her to resist asking him where he'd purchased them. They'd conversed for a few minutes in which she discovered that he was the author of her favourite books, and she couldn't help but tell him of her recent tea party. He'd listened to the tale with rapt attention -- she realised now that he was probably just an old man humouring a child -- and when she'd asked him if he would write of her story, he'd disappointed her politely, saying that he was much to old to attempt another book that would require as much thought as one of the Alice novels. Gwendolyn had understood this, and had a stroke of ambition run through her when he'd suggested she write the book herself: _Gwendolyn's Tea-Time Travels_.

Nothing had come of it, of course, other than a few pages of shaky five-year-old cursive scrawl that would probably read as nonsensical gibberish nowadays. She smirked to imagine the probable title if she were to begin it now: _Gwendolyn's Torrid Tea-Times with Teacher_.

She read well into the evening, until her neck grew stiff and her yawns unremitting. Replacing the book gingerly back in its shelf, she made her way up to her room to sleep. One day down -- fourteen still to go.

* * *

The next day, she rose much later than usual -- around nine in the morning. After showering and dressing, she searched the house for signs of life other than Morgaine and Dippy, and found none. There was a small leather pouch filled with pocket money next to a note from her mother on the table in the dining room, saying that her father had gone to the Ministry and she had gone out to get some Christmas shopping done in Diagon Alley.

Gwendolyn had Dippy fix her a bagel and tea for breakfast, and was just wondering what she would do with herself for the day when she heard a sharp knock at the front door. She entered the foyer just as Dippy was ushering in a boy with long, dirty-blonde hair dressed in brown slacks, a forest-green jumper, and a black cloak. He was glancing about the place looking relaxed and only slightly in awe of his luxurious surroundings.

"Titus," Gwendolyn said with a tiny smirk. "What are you doing here?"

He gave her a lopsided grin and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Well, in theory, I'm taking you to Knockturn Alley. Unless you have other plans...?"

"No, no plans. How did you find out where I lived?"

"Uh...I didn't, really," Nott shrugged a bit nervously. "I sent my owl to find you, and followed him. He's a little sour at being used for a retrieval mission. I probably won't be getting any post from him for a week."

"Well then, I'm practically obligated to go, lest your poor owl's work be done in vain," she sighed in mock-resignation, grabbing her cloak from the hat stand in the corner. Nott opened the door for her with a lopsided grin and a mumble of "Ladies first" before following her out.

The walk couldn't have taken longer than fifteen minutes. Craft Alley was right behind Conspiritore, and Knockturn the one adjacent to Craft. "I need to stop at Gringotts first," Nott said. "You?"

Gwendolyn counted the coins in the pouch -- fifty galleons and ten sickles. Her mother had been a little more generous than usual -- probably a hint that she was to use some of it for Christmas presents. "I'm good."

Nott nodded, and they entered the large, white, goblin-filled building. He handed his key to one of the ugly little creatures, and but a few moments later, they were twisting through the underground caverns at breakneck speed. Nott retrieved some money from Vault 813, and in less that five minutes, they were back above ground and on their way to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour for a sundae before shopping.

They played Spot-the-Mudblood while they ate, trying to pick out the Muggle-born witches and wizards in the large crowd and then criticising them for the most trivial things they could find.

"Over there, that blonde witch in the coat -- her blood must be filthier than Longbottom's knickers after Potions class."

"Definitely. Those shoes? No self-respecting witch would allow a chess board to be grafted onto her boots, especially not in a fashion such as that. It's tempting to take a cleaver to her ankles; lord knows a pair of bleeding stumps would be more attractive."

Nott snorted in amusement and took another bite of mint-fudge-pistachio-chocolate-chip, his light brown eyes scanning the throng of bustling shoppers. Gwendolyn took advantage of his calculating silence.

"What is it about Professor Snape that prevents you from pulling pranks on him? It can't be simply because he's our Head of House. When I asked you about it yesterday, you seemed almost horror-struck by the mere suggestion."

He frowned at her, half from indignation, half from some furtive knowledge that she was most interested in learning.

"I respect him," he said tersely.

"And?"

"And here is not the place to talk about it. Come on," he nodded to his right, changing the subject, "let's get going."

Gwendolyn masked her sigh behind pursed lips as they left their half-finished sundaes on the table and headed in the direction of Knockturn Alley. Nott didn't seem as open-and-shut about the subject as Malfoy did, and she could wait the answers out of him, as long as she got them eventually.

Knockturn Alley turned out to be very worth her while. In America, Dark Arts stores were dispersed thinly throughout shops that catered to more respectable magical supplies; here, one street contained every shifty magical item she could possibly want at her fingertips, and if they didn't have it, chances were they could get it.

Gwendolyn surveyed the scene with the utmost awareness. Witches that could have passed for hags lined the sidewalks, peddling human fingernails and rabid-looking pet rats. The shop windows were filled with all sorts of naughty things: Poisonous candles that emitted deadly fumes when they were burned; body parts and bones, both human and animal; spellbooks that contained some of the most mean curses in existence; and even a restaurant called Hannibal's that had blood soup and treacle-glazed human haggis listed as its special of the day.

Nott led her into the largest store -- Borgin and Burkes -- and immediately headed for the human bones display, while Gwendolyn perused the cabinets near the front. There was a glass eye that rolled to follow her as she moved -- probably one of the same sort Mad-Eye Moody possessed (she'd read of the paranoid Auror in the _Oracle Tribune_ -- the wizarding newspaper of the American Northeast -- after the TriWizard Tournament last year). It would have come in handy, if one didn't need to extract one of their own eyes in order to put the magical one in. Near the eye sat a row of self-contracting nooses ('They Make Strangulation and Snapped Necks a Breeze!'), and on a shelf next to those were a set of Gobstones that spat acid into your opponent's face instead of the usual smelly, benign liquid.

One item in particular caught Gwendolyn's eye -- a withered hand on a dusty cushion, its fingers twisted up as if it had been severed from its body while holding something. She ran her fingertips over the leathery skin slowly, and it gave a little twitch.

"I do hope your business involves more than just loitering in my shop," an oily voice snapped behind her, and she turned to see a stooping, sour-looking wizard of about eighty scowling at her as though her youth automatically constituted cause for disrespect. Gwendolyn regarded him with a cold look and held herself in a way that said without words, "You are beneath me, and it would be wise of you to learn that fact quickly."

"I wish to buy this," she told him, indicating the withered hand. The man's small eyes squinted sceptically.

"The Hand of Glory," he informed her. "Put a candle in it and it gives light only to the holder. A wise choice -- and an _expensive_ one." "Money is not an issue. Are you going to sell it to me or aren't you?"

After a few moments, he grunted gruffly and retrieved the hand from its cushion. He placed it in a small box enchanted with a Cushioning Charm and rang up the sale on the ancient-looking cash register. Gwendolyn opened her pouch to pay him, and his beady eyes widened at the many galleons inside of it.

"I haven't seen you around," he said, slipping into civility now that his customer had proved her worth to him. "If I may ask your name?"

"You may," said Gwendolyn. He didn't get it for a couple of seconds, and then his thin smile twitched faintly at her irony.

"What is your name, then?" he ground out, forcing his tone to be pleasant.

"Gwendolyn Cross. Good day to you, sir," she nodded, her tone clipped, and exited the store with Nott, who was glancing at her out of the corner of his eye and trying to stave off a smirk. "What?" Gwendolyn asked him finally, and he shook his head.

"Are you sure you're not a Malfoy?"

"I'm as much a Malfoy as you are a Muggle," she grimaced, then nodded to the shop across the street. "Let's go in there. I want a shrunken head."

"You're not like normal girls, are you?"

"I should certainly hope not. 'Normal' is such a dreadfully dreary title to be given. I think I'd be insulted by it."

"Gwendolyn, I don't think it's something you'll ever have to worry about."

"Fabulous."

* * *

Her mother was standing in the foyer when she arrived home later on, going through the day's post. Gwendolyn gave her shopping bags to Dippy to take up to her room, and Mrs. Cross handed her two envelopes, one addressed in green ink, the other in violet.

"These came for you today," she said, and Gwendolyn looked over them curiously. The one with green ink was from Malfoy, the other from Catherine Kensington, an acquaintance of hers from Asgarth. She opened Malfoy's first as her mother watched.

_Dear Gwendolyn,_

I'm only writing you because I'm bored out of my skull (Father's at one of his meetings, and Mother's having tea with Mrs. Avery), so don't go thinking I miss you or anything after only one day.

Gwendolyn smirked. Classic Malfoy.

_ Besides, who else could I have written to? It takes Crabbe and Goyle ages to read anything, let alone send a reply, and Pansy is out of the question. She's got enough daft ideas in her head about us as it is, and I'm not going to encourage more._

Hah. I just 'accidentally' caught one of the house-elves dusting the top stacks in the library. He leapt off and landed on his head on the floor to punish himself. It was an amusing few seconds. Now he's slamming books onto his fingers. It's sort of annoying. I think I'll drop-kick him out of the room.

You know, house-elves could probably double for Quaffles. They fly pretty damn far.

I'd practice Quidditch right now, but I can't be bothered with the cold, and the last time Mum caught me practicing in the foyer, she nearly yelled my ears off. Why did I tell you that? That's somewhat embarrassing....Oh well.

Bloody hell, I'm bored. I almost wish I was back at Hogwarts. At least then I could practice curses on Potter and Weasel. You could help.

How generous.

_ I can't think of anything else to write about now. Write me back, if you can manage anything amusing or interesting._

See you,  
—D. Malfoy

She folded the letter back up and replaced it in its envelope, then headed for the stairs.

"You're not going to open the other one?" her mother asked, and Gwendolyn shrugged.

"Why should I?"

"Never sever old ties," Mrs. Cross advised her. "You never know when you might need them."

Gwendolyn nodded, and started once more for her room. Once there, she shut the door and started to go through the brown paper shopping bags Dippy had left on her bed. The shrunken head was the first to be extracted. It had belonged to a blonde woman whose hair was now tugged up in a ponytail tied with a pink ribbon, and her shrivelled lips had been painted a blood-coloured crimson in the shape of a pout, like a morbid doll's head. Gwendolyn had bought it more for decoration than its magical properties (shrunken heads were often used to ward off ill magic intended for their owners), and now placed it on the small writing desk near her window, next to a small vase of daisies.

The presents she'd bought for her parents came next: An ornate silver Sneakoscope with a special Silencing Charm placed on it so that only its owner could hear it when it rang for her father, and a plain gold chain than had been enchanted to transfigure itself into a necklace of any sort that would always compliment its wearer's clothes for her mother.

The Hand of Glory and the dagger she'd bought from Knave's Knick-Knacks and Knives came next. The forked blade of the knife was fine polished silver, smooth and streamlined, and a silver snake with black opal eyes coiled around its handle. Quite a thing of beauty.

Less attractive, but by no means less useful, was the Hand of Glory. Gwendolyn opened its box and ran a gentle finger over its tough, brown skin, and it shivered, its fingers curling in a bit as if to grasp something that wasn't there. She replaced the box lid and took both it and the dagger over to her school trunk to tidy them away. The trunk's lock clicked open when she pointed her wand at it and hissed the password. What she found inside was a rather unpleasant surprise.

Everything within the trunk -- her school robes, spellbooks, parchment, quills, cauldron, diary -- everything was completely coated in a thick, sticky substance that smelled vaguely of maple syrup and stale milk.

Realisation came quickly to her. Yesterday, when she'd entered her dormitory to find Pansy petting Millicent Bulstrode's mangy feline on her trunk and mumbling suspicious words....Gwendolyn should have checked the trunk immediately -- a few detentions with Filch would have done the pug-faced girl a world of good, but as it was, she would have to wait until she returned to Hogwarts to let Pansy know of her...dissatisfaction.

Her robes and cauldron she could have Dippy clean, but the rest of it was as good as unsalvageable no matter how many Cleansing Charms she cast upon it. She would have to go to Diagon Alley again, and she didn't have enough pocket money left for a whole new set of textbooks, which meant that she would have to wait until she received her Christmas money to buy them. She wasn't about to tell her parents -- they would most certainly go to Dumbledore about the incident, and then where would Gwendolyn direct her anger? No, she would have Dippy clean what could be cleaned, and buy the rest new. 

She closed the trunk and hid the hand and dagger away in one of her desk drawers, pulling out a piece of parchment, quill and ink as she did so, and sat down to write Malfoy. The letter from Catherine Kensington would remain unopened for the rest of the day and night.

* * *

It was possible that, had any Slytherin students stayed behind for the holidays, they might have heard the uncommonly loud music emanating from the Potions master's private chambers even in their dormitories.

Severus Snape was not an avid listener of contemporary music, magical or otherwise. He favoured certain pieces of classical music, and was wary of branching away from the tried-and-true. Now, the dusty and seldom-used victrola occupying a corner of his chambers was turned up to top volume with the operatic sounds of Dante's _La Vita Nuova_ filtering through its cylindrical horn and echoing throughout the stone room. It was probably the loudest din the dungeons had been privy to since the tortured screams from back when a Hogwarts detention meant more than a simple frog dissection or quick jaunt through the Forbidden Forest.

Snape waved a long-fingered hand through the air in time to the music as he stared into the crackling flames of his fireplace. In his other hand, he loosely held a snifter of brandy, which he swirled around in its glass before taking a long drink and relishing the delicious burn of it as it slid down his throat.

The images of his dreams floated past the backs of his eyes as he gazed blankly at the fire, and he made no effort to fight them. The dance spun 'round in his mind as the music spun 'round his ears; its nigh-deafening timbre pushing all but the most random of conscious thoughts from his mind, and for this short escape he was grateful. He was without the burden of classes, for a little while at least, and providing there were no last-minute deviations from the plan, it would be five days before he would need to fulfil the Dark Lord's Christmas wishes. 

He had painstakingly sifted through the tripe that was the majority of his fifth-year students' essays earlier in the day, finding but a handful of ones that received top marks. The Granger girl had been one, of course -- after four years, she'd finally gotten it through that supposedly clever head of hers that two rolls of parchment meant precisely that: Two. Not four, not six, not three-hundred-twenty-bloody-eight, but two. He had little patience for her wordy, exceedingly detailed explanations. A complete novel on a single potion wasn't going to impress him, and he considered her work to be ostentatious and dull enough to begin with.

Malfoy's essay had been well-received, naturally. He always sounded self-assured and confident that his answers were the correct ones. The boy was far more intelligent than anyone gave him credit for due to his open hostilities toward the preponderance of his peers, and Snape's favour of him extended to reasons far beyond the small influence of Lucius Malfoy.

Another of the top marks in the class went to the Cross girl, who had a flair for writing and always made her points using insightful analogies and, when all was said and done, boiling things down to simple facts.

Potter had done decently enough, much to Snape's bored chagrin, as had the Weasley boy, whom Snape was convinced could do much better were he not so damn insecure about his academic abilities. The boy had logic, but refused to apply it to anything that wasn't fun and games -- a trait that was almost more annoying than Longbottom's general incompetence.

Needless to say, the essay-grading had done nothing for what little holiday sentiment he possessed to begin with.

"Bah, humbug," he muttered to himself, and downed the remainder of his drink in one long swallow before tossing the glass over his shoulder and listening to it shatter with satisfaction. Figuring it best to clean up the shards lest he forget about them upon waking in the morning and remember their presence with a gash in his foot, he turned, took out his wand, and gave it a few small swirls. The sharp fragments twisted up in a small cyclone, and Snape directed them toward the rubbish bin.

They whirled into a tighter coil as though the music was pushing them to join the opus. A few of the shards clinked together obligingly, sounding like wind chimes before Snape dropped his wand arm to his side, and they fell with a tiny clatter into the bin. A picture of a pale, slender arm reaching out to tap him on the shoulder flashed in his head, and he spun around in reality as if to catch the memory before it had time to elude him yet again. There was but the darkness of his room, and nothing more.

The brandy had been like an opiate to his sleep-deprived brain, and it was with a hint of delusion and a lazy tongue that he asked the air, "Who are you?" And his wit replied, "One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter."

He shook his head -- nonsense, pure and utter nonsense. He was sober enough to appreciate that he had very little desire to become a blue caterpillar measuring three inches at full stature. How very inconvenient that would be, and how very humiliating to teach class in such a state...

A blue caterpillar -- what lunacy was this? The question still stumped him: What feasible trigger was there that sent this mental chain of events in motion? Why the hell was this happening to him? It all seemed to be without explanation, and inexplicability to one as logically inclined as Severus Snape was the closest kith and kin to madness. Was he going mad? He fancied himself of a stronger mind than that. Madness was a disease that preyed on the weak of will, the cowardly, and the foolish, and never had he categorised himself as such.

Perhaps not madness, then. But something, definitely something he had yet to discover the answer to.

He retreated into his bathroom and extorted from the ancient wooden medicine cupboard above the sink a small glass vial. He turned it over in his hand, watching the mercurial blue-black powder so finely ground that it moved like liquid slide back and forth, slipping over the glass without staining it or leaving so much as a veneer of dark dust in its wake. He'd made the potion some days ago, and had tested himself. He'd resisted thus far, but the combination of being half-intoxicated and fully exhausted had only warped his mind further. He retrieved another brandy glass from the cabinet nestled between two bookshelves and filled it with no more than two swallows of alcohol.

He could lace it in, lace it in and the effect of it would become stronger and weaker at the same time -- it would give him leave to sleep with less chance of regaining a dependency, like fire and ice; they cancel each other out, but simultaneously they both burn.

Five drops. To add any more would be to invite a coma -- something that, at this point, he wasn't entirely opposed to -- or a fierce withdrawal in the morning. 

The second the drink hit his tongue, he felt his eyelids grow heavy, and it was with some self-disgust that he realised he would hit the ground before he made it to his bed.

He collapsed onto his sofa gracelessly as the ice slowly slithered through his body, paralysing his muscles. The empty brandy glass slipped from his fingers, and did not have far to fall. It rolled away with the dull scratching sound of crystal against stone. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he could hear the mournful melody of the opera humming out its last tragic lyrics as the victrola wound down. He inhaled a last sharp breath, and sank into oblivion.

* * *

Christmas Eve morning was the sort of winter morning where the sun is painfully bright when piercing through the frozen air, and over half the sky grey clouds have begun to gather, warning those below of an upcoming snowfall. The inhabitants of London took advantage of the holiday, and most slept late, even those of early-to-rise tendencies occupying number nine, Conspiritore Alley.

Gwendolyn headed down the stairs for breakfast still dressed in her nightgown and bathrobe, the Transylvanian doll she'd slept with the previous night still clutched loosely in one arm. The radio next to the Christmas tree in the parlour was tuned to the Witch Wireless Network, and Celestina Warbeck was belting out carols that sounded through the majority of the house's ground floor.

Mr. and Mrs. Cross were already in the dining hall, the former bent of a copy of the _Daily Prophet_ as he sipped his morning coffee, the latter reading a book entitled _Ghosts with the Most: Historical Figures of the Sea and the Harbours They Haunt_, both still clad, like their daughter, in their nightclothes and dressing gowns.

"Good morning," Gwendolyn greeted them as she sat down and picked out a gooey cinnamon roll from the stack on a plate in the middle of the table. They returned her salutations, and Dippy emerged from the kitchens with a large pitcher of pumpkin juice. She poured a glass for Gwendolyn with a wide grin before disappearing once more. "Anything interesting in the papers today, Dad?"

"They're moving a few of the most dangerous prisoners in Azkaban to St. Mungo's," he replied, an almost amused frown on his face. "Fudge has at least partially accepted the fact that the Dementors won't be content with what few Kisses he's allowed them to administer. Not when there are those who would be more than happy to grant them better uses of their time, and on a much larger scale."

Gwendolyn knew it was Lord Voldemort he spoke of. True to his job description, Mr. Cross had a talent for making every word that passed his lips as vague and cryptic as possible, even in casual conversation.

She hadn't thought much about the upcoming war between good and evil, mainly because she didn't really believe in either. There were no wrong and right, no good and bad set in stone; there was just what felt right, and what didn't. Her world was ruled by personal preferences rather than the ethics and morals of the masses. If she had to make a choice between the two here and now, she would have decided her loyalties laid with the darker side of the battle, if only because the benefits it offered her were more to her liking than those of the lighter side's. That, and she believed Dark could win. Good does not inevitably triumph over evil -- it's simply a matter of who makes the most mistakes. Foolishness has no allegiance.

Just then, something regal-looking, brown, and feathered soared through the post window (enchanted to allow nothing but owls to pass through it) and landed gracefully onto the table in front of Gwendolyn. She recognised the bird as Adder, Malfoy's eagle owl, and in his beak he carried an envelope addressed to her in green ink. She took it from him and gave him a piece of cinnamon roll and some pumpkin juice in exchange for his services. Adder hooted once in thanks after he had finished, and was off again.

"Another letter from Draco?" Mrs. Cross asked, arching a groomed eyebrow. Gwendolyn nodded and tore open the envelope coarsely.

_Dear Gwendolyn,_ it read.

_No, scratch that. Just Gwendolyn,_

You went to Knockturn Alley. You went to Knockturn Alley without me. You went to Knockturn Alley with Nott instead of me. NOTT. I am thoroughly disappointed. Wait, no -- I'm glad you went with Nott. He probably didn't even show you all there was to see. If you'd gone with ME, like you should have...

But no. You went with Nott. He's an all right guy, I guess, but let's face it -- he's no Draco Malfoy.

She let out a mirthful snort; Malfoy could write as arrogantly as he could speak.

_ Do you fancy him or something? I think you do. I think you're sweet on him. You've probably muddied up all your textbooks with GC + TN = love4eva or some such bollocks._

He spoke from experience -- Gwendolyn had seen the inside of Pansy's schoolbooks.

_ A shrunken head, huh? Wicked. And bloody weird -- but you knew that already, didn't you? Father's got a few of them in his study. I think one of them died with bad acne or something, because it looks more like a dried-up toadstool than a person's head._

She hadn't mentioned the dagger or the Hand of Glory. Knowing Malfoy, he'd always be asking to borrow them for the most asinine reasons, like lurking outside the entrance to the Gryffindor common room to catch, curse and threaten random students as they exited. She planned to put them to more practical use.

_ How many presents have you gotten yet? There's already thirty or so with my name on them under our tree already. I can tell one of them is a new racing broom -- probably a Firebolt Zeus Series -- but Mother refuses to let me open it no matter how obvious it is. It's infuriating. It should be a crime to let a broom like that sit and wait to be ridden for any longer than it absolutely has to. I can't wait 'til Potter sees it. He'll be shitting kittens about it when we play Gryffindor in January._

At the beginning of the next paragraph, there was a large splotch of ink, as though Malfoy had had his quill pressed against the parchment for quite some time before he had made the decision to write what came next.

_ ...I'm going to do you a favour. Stay home Christmas morning, while it's still dark outside. Don't ask me why -- ever -- and tell no one that I've told you this. Burn the letter. And for gods' sakes, don't mention it to me. It's already annoying that I consider you decent enough to be told in the first place, okay?_

Happy Christmas,  
—D. Malfoy

Gwendolyn frowned. How very curious indeed.

She excused herself quickly and raced up the stairs to her bathroom. Tossing the letter into the sink, she pulled her wand from the pocket of her bathrobe, pointed it at the parchment, and said "_Incendio_." It flared up instantly, blackening and curling in on itself, reminding her through her contemplation of it that she would need to buy a new diary when she went shopping.

What ill fate awaited the city of London that night? It was just past ten -- fourteen hours until she would find out. She knew that the Malfoys were avid if cautious supporters of Lord Voldemort...

Of course. An attack on London, packed with Muggles visiting relatives for the holidays, all of them blissfully ignorant from Christmastime joy...what a deliciously constructed irony.

Her father would without a doubt be pulled from bed to help deal with the pandemonium. Gwendolyn wondered if he knew already...no, no -- he couldn't. The Ministry would have never granted his request not to work on the two key days of confrontation if they had any idea...or would they? Cornelius Fudge hardly seemed the type to excel at strategising, or leadership of any kind, honestly, and Stephen Cross's job was so damned shadowy, there was no way to tell what he was involved in and what he wasn't.

A surge of adrenaline shot through her as she stepped into her room and began to pace the length of it hastily as Morgaine (who had finally forgiven her for the cat-carrier incident) looked queerly on from her place on the bed, and she hoped she wasn't blowing things out of proportion. This was big, this was very big, and that she was possessed of this secret knowledge sent a thrill up her spine that caught in her throat, feeling like a scream clawing to escape her lips. She covered her mouth to muffle a high, gleeful giggle.

The knock at her door startled her, and she opened it to see her father, a quizzical look on his face.

"Is everything all right, _mon enfant fou_?" he asked. "You left in a hurry."

Gwendolyn put on a small and wryly innocent smile, and nodded. "Everything's wonderful. Malfoy's letter just reminded me that I haven't answered Catherine Kensington's. She wrote me days ago, and I just wanted to make sure that I got it done before I forgot again."

"Ah. Send her my regards, then," he said, and turned to head back downstairs. Gwendolyn shut the door again behind him, and spun around to lift a startled Morgaine off her bed.

"Isn't it grand, Morgaine? Isn't it?" she asked the cat, holding one of its paws out and twirling it around as though they were waltzing. Morgaine looked at her sedately and began to purr as if to say, "If you say so, dear." 


	7. Have Yourself a Macabre Little Christmas

A couple of warnings: This chapter contains fairly descriptive counts of Muggle torture which those easily offended by such things may wish to skip over. And I dare say those who prefer repentant!Snape might not enjoy this version of him. If this is all fine and dandy with you, do read on.

**Part 7 -- Have Yourself a Macabre Little Christmas**

Snape woke late in the day on Christmas Eve, half from fatigue and half from an effort not to be seen by the students who were remaining at the castle over the holidays, and also by his fellow educators -- the more he was in the company of the lambs and the lions, the more questions he would face regarding his own wolfishness. He would claim illness if they asked about his absences from meals, and his ordinary disposition was such that they wouldn't think twice about his choosing to recuperate alone in his room than in the fairly public hospital wing.

The Draught of the Living Death had done little to quell the dreams, but it kept him unconscious long enough to obtain some semblance of rest after the dance was done. It was a light sleep -- not the pitch cataleptic his body and mind would need for true convalescence -- but he had yet to entertain the idea of himself as a blue caterpillar since, and for that much he was appreciative.

He had been correct -- his system did indeed allow the drug to wrap around him like a cold, sating blanket. The cravings came when the sun set, like a fever on his tongue and through his veins; like the dreams, stronger with each passing night, a double burn with only half an escape. He pushed the thoughts from his head of what he would do that night when they came, refusing to believe that something he had conquered before could weaken him so quickly again. He was not the vacillating young man he once was.

It was then Snape realised, with no small amount of irritability, that he was pacing again. It was the nervous gesture of someone who didn't have complete control over their situation, and he found it despicable. He was logic, damn it. He was calm, calculating, shrewd and astute.

He was sweltering.

* * *

For the rest of the day, Gwendolyn was utterly beside herself with anticipation of the night to come. Malfoy had been mistaken if he thought his ominous letter to her would be enough of a reason for her to keep safely inside that night -- rather the opposite, for once Gwendolyn developed a thirst for something, she would pursue it until the end of days if she had to.

She wiled away the hours occupying herself by spending time with her parents and going through some of her old things in her room. One of the first she found was a pair of petal-pink ballet toe-shoes from her childhood. When she was young, she had often dreamt of becoming a prima ballerina in the Compagnie de l'Ensorceler (the wizarding world's most renowned ballet company); lithe and graceful and tragically beautiful. She had started lessons at the age of five, but found that when she had started at Asgarth at eleven, classes and homework took up most of her time, and it was with much remorse that she had resigned from her dancing within a couple of months.

She missed the dance now, the exhilarating feel she used to get from soaring through the air and spinning like a top on pointe. Perhaps she could have better channelled her nostalgia through a daydream, but as it was, she had risen from the floor, used her armoire as a barre, and had begun to go through the motions that had seemed so natural and easy when she had been ten.

It had been like riding a bicycle -- a rusty bicycle. She hadn't forgotten anything, but she just couldn't get her body to _bend_ like it used to. Inflexibility had snuck up on her and she hadn't even realised it, and it was after many pliets and pirouettes that the stupidity of her actions truly sunk in. She was sore all over by dinnertime, and had actually been surprised that she could still sit down with relative comfort.

Her mother certainly noticed her stiffness. "Are you all right, Gwendolyn dear?" she asked as Dippy skittered around the table, arranging side-dishes and wine glasses.

"No," Gwendolyn frowned. "I assaulted myself by forcing ballet on cold muscles. I think I pulled something awkward."

Her father choked a bit on his water, and Dippy patted him on the back.

"It is dangerous to drink and breathe at the same time, Sir," the house-elf said gently, and Mrs. Cross smirked. "It's dangerous to drink in general while Gwendolyn's in the room."

Her daughter hmphed and picked at a buttered roll as Dippy ducked back into the kitchens to retrieve the main course. "I've been thinking of taking it up again," she said. "Dancing, that is. I'm so out of shape, its maddening."

Mr. Cross frowned slightly. "Are you sure you'll be able to keep up with your studies? The only reason you quit in the first place is because you didn't have enough time for everything," he pointed out. Gwendolyn only shrugged.

"I wasn't used to the workload then. Besides, I'm not going to be training properly; its strictly for leisure purposes this time. I'll only be needing a couple of new leotards, and some new toe-shoes."

"It shouldn't be too difficult to find a place for that," Mrs. Cross said. "I haven't even seen all of Diagon Alley yet. I'm sure they'll have something."

Dippy returned, struggling with a large silver serving tray on which sat a succulent-looking dish of venison. The dinnertime conversation waned away from dance to social politics, and Gwendolyn's interest left the discussion in favour of Malfoy's letter, and the best way to go about ignoring its cryptic warning that night.

* * *

"_Masqmordre_," Snape hissed after ducking out of the sitting room fireplace at his estate at ten to midnight. The mask slid from his wand like solidifying ether, and he placed it over his face, already damp from the sticky sweat of withdrawal. He tried to ignore the nigh-painful tightness in his stomach, which was the result of more than just an addiction being denied.

Snape was a man woven of lies, and one would need to put him under the influence of Veritaserum for him to admit that his anticipation went beyond that of the Ministry's reaction to the Death Eaters' holiday plans. Most regarded him as an unpleasant man -- they didn't know the half of it. Anyone with the most basic grasp of psychology would be able to figure out that he was far from humane, if they would only stop complicating things and look at what was right in front of their noses. For all the thoughts and feelings he secreted away, Snape had discovered very early on in life that sometimes the best place to hide things is in plain sight, and for one who knew what they were searching for in him, it was a very short step to the realisation that Severus Snape had a sadistic streak in him as long as the heavens are wide. It's a fine, blurred line between good and evil, and which side you fight for does not always reflect on the integrity of your soul. Sensible motives aside, if a person enjoys inflicting pain, and is given a chance to hurt another in the name of righteousness with the most minimal of repercussions, make no mistake that they _will_ take advantage of that.

He was exhausted, on edge and, as the Cross girl had so aptly put it, so bottled up inside he wanted to scream, and he was desperately looking forward to a release from the pressures of such conflicting emotions.

As he Disapparated to meet Lucius and the others in the London, he couldn't help the small twitch of his mouth that, had the mask not obscured the whole of his face, could have almost been taken for a very small smile.

"Severus. I was beginning to wonder whether or not you'd show."

Even with the aid of vocal communication, Snape would have known it whose face was behind the ghoulish mask that matched his own. Lucius Malfoy was but an inch shorter than Snape himself, but carried himself with an obvious arrogant pride that made him appear taller than he was.

"You should know better than to question that, Lucius," Snape replied, and did not need to see the other man's face to know that he wore a smile of pure malevolence when he answered, "Indeed."

Snape surveyed with indifferent calculation the black-clad and be-masked figures around him -- the focal knot of Death Eaters responsible for Muggle torture. In addition to Lucius and himself, Snape easily recognised the forms of Walden Macnair, Phillip Nott, Dominic Flint, Brutus Crabbe and Boris Goyle. Still missing were the Lestranges, Felix and Drusilla, though their tenure in Azkaban was unlikely to last much longer.

They weren't the only ones lurking the dangerous and deserted London alleyways that night, of course. Lord Voldemort had constructed himself quite the organised institution in the few months it had taken him to rise once again to the same resemblance of power he had possessed fourteen years previous. Whatever confidences remained shaken about his abilities to be just as formidable and crushing as he had before would be stilled after tonight -- or such were his expectations. A grand gesture of viciousness to win over those he sought to invest in his 'cause'. If the Dark Lord was anything, he was an extremely persuasive businessman first, and there were currently at least half a dozen or more cell groups not unlike the one Snape was party to positioned throughout the city that would confirm that fact.

Lucius glanced at the elegant silver pocketwatch located within his robes. "Seven minutes," he announced softly. The street within their view was heaving with bodies rushing this way and that, despite the late hour, in various states. Snape spotted a smartly-dressed couple walking slowly arm-in-arm, swaying a bit as though partially inebriated -- either going to or coming from a posh holiday party -- and with a fleeting look at Lucius, he knew he had found their first victims. A Malfoy had nothing if not exquisite taste.

* * *

_'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the Cross house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse..._ Gwendolyn thought to herself. _Though not for long, if Malfoy's letter held any truth..._

She checked the clock on her bedside table -- two to twelve -- and settled restlessly back into her pillow. Beneath her sheets, she was fully clothed, save her cloak, and Morgaine was curled up pensively near her feet as if prepared to leap away should her master make any sudden movements to flee the bed. The air was thick with a palpable tension, and Gwendolyn fought against the urge to rise and look out her window down at the street for any conspicuous activities that might have been afoot. If what she thought would happen truly did, she wanted to appear as naïve as possible of the goings-on, at least until her father left the house.

Another look at the clock -- forty-eight seconds until midnight. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe deeply and relax. Once midnight came, she would still have to wait for the commotion within her home to die down before she dared venture from her bed.

Twenty-seven seconds.

Twelve.

One.

She didn't notice the light at first, faint and small as it was despite its lack of distance from her home. It wasn't until it began to swell, and the brilliant green shape began to form, that it caught her eye through the window -- an enormous skull with a snake slithering through its snarling jaws, rising over the city like a gruesome mockery of the facet of the great and powerful Oz that had been presented to Dorothy at the end of her yellow-brick-paved journey. It took her breath away.

A sound not unlike that of a far-away explosion rippled through the air, causing Morgaine's ears to perk in rapt attention, and then, for a few moments, nothing.

Vaguely, she heard a sort of scuffling sound coming from her parents' bedroom, followed by muffled voices exchanging heated words of urgency. It wasn't long before she heard their door open, chased by the quiet sound of her mother's footsteps -- her father had probably already Disapparated to the Ministry. Gwendolyn closed her eyes, and not a second too soon. She heard her own door open, and tried not to squint back the light that suddenly streamed into the room. Mrs. Cross remained in the threshold for some time, watching her daughter well past the time it would take her to think she was asleep and safe in her bed, and it took all of Gwendolyn's willpower not to yell at her to get on with it, that she was sixteen years old and a two-second check-up was more than sufficient proof of her well-being.

Eventually, she got her wish; the door shut once more, and she waited until hearing Mrs. Cross descend down the stairs before deigning to move. Quickly, she rose, and Morgaine did indeed jump to the floor to avoid being accidentally kicked. After hastily fastening on her cloak, she stuffed her wand into the back pocket of her jeans and opened the smallish round window that faced the front lawn. She stood on her trunk that she had strategically placed in front of it and slipped easily through it feet-first, glad that she was more than slender enough to escape any hindrance it might have posed.

Once sitting securely on the sill, she removed her wand from her jeans and pointed it at the Hand of Glory, now holding a candle, and the new dagger, both of which she'd hidden beneath her bed earlier that day. "_Accio_," she commanded. The hand obeyed first, and then the knife. She tucked the latter (sheathed) into her belt, and clutched the former tightly. Wand back in its pocket, she dropped the three stories from her window to the soft snow-covered ground, landing unhurt with an agile roll that demonstrated the resilience of her people.

A few others had begun to venture from their homes to gawp at the foreboding branding of the sky, some shouting worriedly, others too stunned or frightened to speak. Gwendolyn followed their gazes and noticed that there was not one mark shadowing the stars, but seven that she could see, all of them beginning to crumble away by now in great sprinklings of vivid green dust. She located the one she had seen -- due Southwest from her present position -- and started for the barrier wall between Conspiritore Alley and Muggle London. She walked swiftly -- though it was doubtful anyone would notice her with all that was going on, she didn't want to take the chance of having to explain why a sixteen-year-old girl was heading toward the source of some of the Darkest magic of the century.

The trash receptacle hiding the barrier must have had some sort of detection charm placed on it, for it had already moved out of the way when she passed through the wall and into the dingy Muggle street. She gripped the Hand of Glory by its shrivelled wrist, took out her wand, and lit the candle that would illuminate the road for her eyes only. After a short glance at her unsavoury surroundings, she rested the wand on her palm. "Point me," she ordered it, and its tip swivelled around to the North. Once she got her bearings, she advanced toward the first Dark Mark with a buzz-like sense of anticipation.

She didn't need to walk far to see the effects the Mark was having on the city. She'd only been going for about five minutes before another green symbol was shot into the sky, causing passers-by to look up and gasp in nervous awe.

"I didn't know there'd be fireworks tonight," a man in a grubby brown trenchcoat muttered to his companion, who frowned up at the heavens anxiously.

"Me neither. Pretty ghastly display, though."

Gwendolyn smirked to herself. They had no idea.

She continued on her way, keeping to the darker parts of the streets so as not to arouse suspicion. Even in the wizarding world, a teenaged girl skulking around in the shadows carrying a withered severed hand would have seemed a bit out-of-place. Every so often, a rat or two would shriek and scurry along the side of a wall, or into a pile of waste. More and more Muggles were making the grave error of stepping out of their homes to see what was going on; they would not be meeting any sugarplum fairies that night, that was for damn sure. Gwendolyn did not pity their ignorance.

She didn't stop until she came to a place that was wrapped up in a flurry of activity and loud, urgent-sounding voices. The sign above the establishment read 'O'Neill's Pub', and, after blowing out the candle and tucking the hand into the back waistband of her jeans, she went inside.

The scene was chaotic. Those who had gotten the gist that the Dark Mark equalled dark things were crowded around the bar, ordering every sort of alcohol imaginable, both straight and in combinations. The solitary bartender looked as though he was about to start taking the shots for himself. Certainly no one was paying any attention to her. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Gwendolyn discreetly pointed her wand at one of the patrons who had his back turned to her, at a bulge in his back pocket that greatly resembled a money purse, and whispered, "_Accio_." The man didn't even notice as his wallet flew from his pants into Gwendolyn's waiting hand.

She had never actually seen Muggle money before, but knew enough of it to know that the bits of paper with the word 'pounds' on them were worth something. She took it all, dropped the wallet underneath a table, and pushed her way through the swarm of people attempting to become piss-drunk to the bar.

She ordered something basic, something she knew they would have. "Double brandy."

The bartender was in such a frantic state, he didn't so much as glance at whomever had ordered the drink, and she was saved from needing identification. He set the requested liquor in front of her, and she drank it down greedily before taking a moment to appreciate the rich burn of it before throwing the wad of money on the bar and slipping away once more through the crowd.

The intoxication didn't set in until a couple of minutes later, when the bitter cold air began to feel quite pleasant against her flushed skin. She kept walking, filled with an exultant ambience, a half-dazed smile curling up at the corners of her mouth. She got a little off-course, and corrected her course by taking what she hoped was a shortcut through a dank alleyway, then froze as something tall, dark, and ghostly cracked into existence directly in front of her.

* * *

They disposed of their third victim even more ferociously than the first two, like a pack of rabid wolves who hunt solely for the pleasure of feeling human bones snap between their jaws. This time the chosen quarry was a corpulent middle-aged man in a tweed coat and a bowler hat, the sort of cheap refinement associated with the inept sidekick Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame. 

Crabbe and Goyle held the screaming man down, who watched with round, horrified eyes as Macnair drew a blade from beneath his cloak that already glinted red and gold with still-warm blood and streetlight. In the back of his mind, Snape could hear the poetically violent melody of opera music as the knife was plunged deep into the man's gut, and then dragged slowly from the bottom of his ribcage to the end of his portly belly. If he listened hard enough, the shredding sounds of torn flesh and fabric melded into the strings section of his mental orchestra. His lip curled back in a grisly sneer at the thought.

Once Macnair had finished, Crabbe and Goyle released the still-writhing gentleman, who clutched desperately at his mid-section as if trying to keep his innards from squirming out of his body like fat pink worms, and Lucius Malfoy stepped forward.

It came as a surprise to no one that Malfoy had been given the privileged appointment as leader in the Death Eater sect of Muggle torture. It was the shared vision of seeing beauty in brutality that formed the group, but few could accomplish it with as much clarity as he. Snape viewed it as a luxury to indulge in like a fine wine; to Macnair it was an enjoyable occupation; to Lestrange, a compulsive need. To Malfoy, it was an art. Artists strive for perfection in their works, and Lord Voldemort valued faultless accomplishment within his ranks above all else. Malfoy was a ruthless perfectionist, an artist with brushes of human hair, paints of blood, and a canvas of Muggle skin.

"_Crucio_," Malfoy hissed, his steely eyes wide and hungrily manic, and the man's dull, lamenting groans rose to screams that curdled in his throat, eventually drowning out into a laborious, pain-filled gurgle. The curse was uttered a second time, and the prey wailed again, still gripping his own entrails. He thrashed like a fish out of water, and Snape briefly wondered if the man even realised that he was ripping out his own stomach, now a cerise sack of acid and partially-digested food. It reminded the Potions master of one of Peeves' water balloons that had been filled with bile.

It took the man a few minutes to die the agonising death fate had dealt him, at last coming to rest in a pool of his own blood and viscera. Snape himself had cleaved the remaining string of small intestine from the body, six feet in length when stretched. More than enough.

The Aurors that would soon arrive on the scene would find an eviscerated body hanging from a lamppost by a noose fashioned out of his own bowels, framed by skull and snake of glittering emerald against an amethyst sky.

Snape Apparated into a dank alleyway, where they were to meet before selecting their next kill. His head, still reeling with the malady of withdrawal and the adrenaline of murder, didn't immediately process that because he was the first of his faction to arrive, it did not mean that he was the only person there. Now shrouded in pitch-black shadows, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness.

The figure appeared before him slowly, like a burnout from a camera flash -- outlined in white, and filled in with black ink. The form of it was distinctly feminine, despite the cloak enveloping the body from his gaze, and not one he recognised. The shoulders were narrow and round, and if he squinted, he could just see the soft part of full lips that looked as though they were waiting for a gasp to escape. None came.

Gwendolyn stared at the masked man before her -- obviously a man, from his height and wiry build, and more obviously, a Death Eater. It occurred to her in her somewhat drunken state what an odd title that was for a person: Death Eater. One who eats Death. And then it struck her what a naughty-sounding turn of phrase that was, and she couldn't stifle a short giggle.

Snape blinked once at the sudden outburst, his hand tightening the grasp it had on his wand. She wasn't a Muggle -- the cloak gave that much away. Not an Auror, either, else she would have attacked him the second he had Apparated in front of her. And what sane witch, allied with the Dark Lord or not, would laugh at the presence of a Death Eater?

_What does it matter who she is or what she's doing here? his mind snapped at him. Obliviate her and be done with it before the others arrive._ He started to raise his wand, but it was as though his muscles had seized -- he couldn't move his right arm for anything.

He watched as she raised something she had been holding to her face and gave it a small puff of air, like she was miming blowing out a candle.

She took in his appearance at length by the light of the Hand of Glory, all black robes and pallid, skeletal façade. There was a light spray of crimson slowly darkening to coagulated brown -- he had taken life tonight. Perhaps as recently as the last Dark Mark she'd seen mushrooming against the sky. Death Eater. One who feasts on death. One who thrives on the loss of life, who licks the soul from a body and washes it down with the soporific melancholy borne of mourning. Gwendolyn wondered, would he taste of the souls he so freshly captured that night?

She blew out the candle, as the dead and fire so rarely mixed well, and she didn't want to chance ruining this special occasion. She stepped forward, so that they were faceless to faceless.

He couldn't see her hand move with her this close to him in the heavy darkness, and scarcely had a chance to feel it as it lifted his mask from the lower half of his face, and was quite suddenly replaced with her cool mouth against his. He was rooted to the ground, his wand still useless at his side and his arms refusing to obey his order to push her away. Her lips were forceful against his, and where he meant to speak in protest of this cursory tryst, he only succeeded in deepening the kiss as her fingers snaked within his hood and through his hair. He could taste the dirty remnants of liquor on her tongue, hot in contrast to those lips, like fire and ice, life and death, brandy, blood and potion.

She took his heat-clouded mind with her as she pulled away, leaving him with an infusion of ice he hadn't ever experienced without the aid of a vial. What magic was this that quelled his fever with a kiss?

For a moment, he thought she might have taken what little light there was streaking through the alleyway with her as well, and then he realised that sometime between touches, he had closed his eyes. When he opened them again, she was nowhere to be seen.

Gwendolyn watched his silhouette from her place crouched behind a metal rubbish bin -- she'd thought it best to hide from his view. Samplings such as the one she had supped from were not meant to linger, if lingering was not the original intent. He stood, hushed and still, for a few moments before slowly raising a hand to replace his mask properly back on his face, covering his soft mouth that had tasted of sweet honey and bitter ashes. The warm feel of it still dallied on her tongue.

There was a series of half a dozen or so quiet cracks a bit down the alleyway, and Gwendolyn craned her neck, straining to see what had been the source of the sounds. She didn't dare risk lighting the Hand of Glory again -- though the light from the candle would be visible to her and her alone, the light from her wand she would need to conjure for it most certainly would not.

Death Eaters, seven of them now, all conversing nigh-silently amongst themselves. She didn't have to hear what they were saying to know what they were discussing. The Muggle street connected to the alleyway still had lives to claim.

The group of them emerged from the darkness into the well-lit road in a superior flourish of billowing cloaks and robes, the one she had tasted a step behind the others as if waiting for her to pull him back in another embrace. She kept stagnant until he had gone, and then shifted her position to the shadows at the mouth of the alleyway to better view the goings-on in the street.

Snape forced himself to concentrate on the work at hand, no longer beleaguered by the retraction of the Draught of the Living Death from his system, instead caught up in curiosity of the identity of the woman who had extracted it. His fatigue had yet to depart, and it was with a distant mind that he watched Crabbe and Goyle hold down their latest victim -- a woman in a blue silk dressing gown -- on her front, the latter slamming her head against the pavement with a sickening thud so that she was too incoherent to scream. The Aurors would most certainly be out in force by now, and discretion was becoming more important with every second that ticked past.

Macnair cut a long slit in the woman's robe, exposing her back to the frigid air, and looked pointedly to Snape. For all his perfectionism, Lucius had a tendency to become...overzealous...in his work, and the Hogwarts Potions master more than made up for whatever the blond man lacked in precision. He extorted a scalpel from a small sheath on his belt, knelt next to the woman, and began to make a deep incision, a large oval shape in her back like a portrait frame. The blade slid into her skin easily, like a hot knife through butter. She squirmed in pain, and he paused, looking pointedly at Goyle, who wrapped a large, burly hand around her neck and squeezed. There was a soft croaking sound from her throat, and then she stilled, unconscious. Snape finished the incision, and began to make another.

Gwendolyn stared in total fascination as the kneeling Death Eater cut a pattern she couldn't quite discern into the woman's flesh. When he had finished, he slid a gloved hand beneath the Muggle's hide as if to loosen it from whatever hold it still might have had on the muscles beneath it. Another Death Eater -- shorter than the kneeling one by about three inches -- bent down and carefully peeled up the oval of flesh, while another kept his hand firmly on the pattern in the centre. It folded over his hands like a flap of damp cloth, and the other Death Eater lifted the centrepiece from the woman's back and held it up to the light of the streetlamp. Gwendolyn saw what it was then -- a nearly flawless tissue cut-out of the Dark Mark.

The last Death Eater took the blade from the one who had cut the dressing gown, and without the finesse that the others had possessed, began to hack into the bare sinew, shedding ribbons of muscle on either side until the spine was exposed. He gripped it at the base of her neck, and with a strength that didn't seem wholly human, yanked it from its body with a stomach-churning crunch. He muttered something Gwendolyn didn't catch, and the vertebrae became rigid and stiff, like a piece of wood. 

"Turn her over," Malfoy ordered, his voice broken slightly with eagerness. Crabbe and Goyle rolled the woman, who now sagged with the absence of her spinal column, onto her exposed back with a slap of raw meat on pavement. He removed the remnants of her dressing gown and her dignity with a wave of his wand, and took a moment to run his slippery eyes over the as-yet-untouched cleanliness of the front of her body before inflicting the first wound. Snape would never forget that particular wet thunk.

She didn't bleed much at all when her stomach was impaled by her own spine, Gwendolyn noticed. She had most likely died quite some minutes earlier -- the last Death Eater had undoubtedly severed vein along with bone.

The two others still holding her flesh in their hands had also stiffened their prizes. The oval outline had been stretched a bit, and the centrepiece slightly shrunk, so that when they were attached to the backbone it created an eerie embossed cameo effect. One of the larger men that had been holding the woman down raised his wand to the sky and grunted out something Gwendolyn couldn't understand, and not a second later, the Dark Mark was shooting into the clouds, and the band of Death Eaters Disapparated away in search of their next victim. 

Gwendolyn rose on legs that were unsteady from alcohol consumption and the rush of what she had just witnessed, and slowly walked toward the mutilated corpse, regarding it with half-wonderment and half-scientific-calculation. It had begun to snow again. The street was encompassed by a silence whose chill rivalled that of the winter air -- the only sounds she heard were those of her own boots on the asphalt, and the steady drip-drip-drip of blood from the morbidly-fashioned signpost erected from the woman's belly.

Gwendolyn studied the lifeless face of the carcass, its mouth frozen in a twisted growl of pain, white snowflakes sticking to its mousy brown hair and melting on the still-warm skin. She could just see the bottoms of blue irises from beneath half-lidded, rolled-up eyes. She had never seen a dead human body before except at her great-great-grandmother Evelyn's funeral, and it was needless to say that the old woman's grey, sleeping form was nowhere near as spectacular as this.

Cautiously, she bent down, withdrawing the dagger from her belt as she did so, and ran the blade gently across the woman's throat. She wondered what it would be like to feel the hard gristle of a larynx give beneath the sharp pressure of her knife, whether it would crunch or snap or slice easily, if she could simply press down, or if she would half to saw through skin and flesh.

"What the hell are you doing?!" a male voice asked harshly from behind her, and Gwendolyn spun around to find Titus Nott coming toward her at a run, his dirty-blond hair bouncing in a low ponytail behind him. He stopped in front of her and frowned at the body, but didn't appear to find it overly offending. "Come on," he said, his breath fogging as he grabbed her by the arm and led her into a different alleyway, all the while throwing alarmed glances over his shoulder. "You shouldn't be here -- the Aurors and Obliviators are everywhere tonight. It won't take them long to find the body."

He gripped the Hand of Glory by the wrist, just above where she held it, and lit it with his wand so that they would both be able to see where they were going. They never left the darkness as they walked, Nott navigating them back in the direction of Conspiritore Alley. Gwendolyn stumbled every so often, until he looked at her quizzically and propped her up against a clammy wall with one hand on her shoulder. His face moved close to hers, his brow knitted. "You're drunk."

"I'm not," she protested, giving him the Cross glare she had used on the store clerk in Borgin and Burkes, though the result of it was a far less successful one.

"You are, I can smell it on your breath."

"My breath is my business," she sniffed. "And even if I were drunk, I wouldn't be for long with you badgering me about it."

"Oh, yes," he muttered sarcastically. "Now that I think about it, I'm sure you would have much preferred being found at the scene of a violent crime with a dagger held to the victim's throat. My apologies for dragging you away from such an opportunistic venture."

She glowered at him and prodded him in this chest with her finger. "What were _you_ doing skulking around there, hm? Why weren't you someplace safe and guiltless?"

"Because I had to go out and look for your senseless arse!" he hissed, and then a faint blush crept into his cheeks, barely visible against the warm candlelight. "I flew over to your house to check on you. Your mother said you were asleep. As you had so carelessly left your window open, I flew up to wake you after she'd shut the door -- I figured you wouldn't want to miss the light show," he gestured up at the sky, to where another Dark Mark was beginning to crumble and dissipate. "You weren't there, and it doesn't take a genius to put two and two together. That I managed to find you at all without my broom was bloody dumb luck."

Gwendolyn narrowed her eyes at him and arched a single eyebrow. "You were really that worried about me?" she asked sceptically, and Nott shrugged, looking flustered.

"I couldn't be sure the Death Eaters wouldn't mistake you for a Muggle if they found you---"

"I _beg_ your pardon!"

"Gwendolyn, please," he said soberly, looking her up and down. "Take away the cloak, and you look like just another girl in jeans and a turtleneck holding a severed hand. They wouldn't know right off the bat not to hurt you, and they tend to curse first and ask questions later."

"And if they saw _you_?" she demanded.

"They're not going to do anything to me," he mumbled, dodging the subject with his eyes. But Gwendolyn would have none of it -- she was more tipsy than she was patient, and would have her answers now.

"Why not? I deserve to know by now. You've been nothing but sketchy and if you honestly do give a shit about whether or not I end up like that woman did, you'll tell me what the bloody hell is going on."

Nott pushed off from the wall and started again for Conspiritore Alley. "You're the history buff," he said, tugging the Hand a bit to get her to follow him, "you figure it out."

Gwendolyn scowled at him defiantly and promised, "I will."

* * *

It wasn't until just before dawn that Snape returned to his estate, still exhausted yet oddly tranquil-feeling, the sort of sensation one gets after finally accomplishing a most difficult task. He shed his soiled cloak and robes, and allowed them to drop where he stood on his bedroom floor, knowing that the house-elves would be halfway through laundering them by the time he emerged from his bath.

He sank into the all but scalding water slowly, the large, deep claw-footed tub giving him leave to stretch and relax as he pleased. The air was fogged with thick steam, just as his head was when his mind travelled back to the memory of the alleyway kiss that had occurred not five hours ago, when some secret nymph had immersed him in burning ice before vanishing just as quickly as he had appeared.

The all-too-familiar question tugged at the strings of his thoughts: Who was she? Had she come from his dreams, and if that was the case, had she been there at all, or had his mind deteriorated to the point of hallucination, a phantasm failsafe to keep himself from thinking he was going mad? Perhaps that was it...perhaps he had simply eaten from the wrong side of the mushroom, and his vision had suffered the consequences. After all, the Weasley twins were staying at the castle for the holiday break, and he wouldn't dream of putting it past them to slip a suspicious-looking toadstool into his tea, Tweedledum and Tweedledee that they were.

He slid deeper into the tub, his head beneath the water, and lay there for some time with only the sound of liquid in his ears, not surfacing again until he absolutely had to breathe.

If Dumbledore had indeed informed the Ministry of the attack Snape had warned him about -- and Snape had no doubt that he had -- they had executed their prevention of it most poorly. Snape wouldn't know the full details of all that had happened outside of his faction until he returned to Hogwarts later that day, but from what he had seen and experienced that night, Fudge may as well have given the Death Eaters free reign over the city. Needless to say, the man was going to be on the shakiest of terms with the Muggle prime minister in the future, as well as his own standing in the affairs of the magical government. One more such incident, and his precious position would be snatched out from under his feet before he could say "gulping gargoyles." To say he would be missed would be the most obvious of lies.

Snape snatched a bar of soap from the dish near the taps and began to wash himself of the filth and grime that had accumulated on his skin despite the robes, mask, cloak and gloves that shielded his body from detection. Yes, Fudge was a constant irritant, a blind coward for whom Snape had no respect. It was true that, either way the war folded in the end, Snape had created a buffer for himself -- he would be accepted on either side, renouncing the bad when the good was victorious, as he had done before, and vice-versa. He did what he had to in order to survive and secure a place for his life among the masses. But the mere fact that his work, his risks, were being virtually ignored by the man in power -- and he used all three words quite loosely -- annoyed Snape to no end, and he often wondered what the point was of dispensing the valuable information he held if it was to be swept away as nothing more than rubbish. Idle musings of aggravation, mostly. He would do what he did until given a concrete reason to stop, and even then, he would always be prepared to return to his old ways.

_"I could never stop, even if I wanted to."_

_"I know...I know."_

He tossed the soap back at the dish. It hit with a hard knock, and bounced back into the water. 

What did the old man know? Did he know that, beneath the smokescreen of brooding intensity, his _faithful_ Potions master enjoyed the dangerous task he undertook? Was he aware that on more than one occasion, Snape had found the notion of the headmaster's death a potentially pleasant one? Dumbledore was a great wizard, a wise man, and on an intellectual plateau with the spy in which he placed so much trust -- but when it came right down to it, Snape's contemplations of him began and ended with a solitary thought: At what point would that wisdom outstay its usefulness? At what point would action need to be taken, and in whose favour would Snape's loyalties and ambitions lie when that happened?

Time would tell, he supposed.

He stepped out of the tub and began to dry himself with a dark green bath towel as he made his way back into his bedroom. Sure enough, the House Elves had removed his dirty clothes from the floor, and had lit a fire in the fireplace. Snape finished rubbing the excess water out of his hair and opened his wardrobe, selected a set of satiny black pyjamas, and dressed. He would sleep here today, away from the shocked faces of the righteous and the questions of the vexed for which he had no patience left. He would dream here as well, and dance between the bodies with which he had helped to litter the London streets.

* * *

**126 DEAD IN CHRISTMAS MASSACRE**

_by Tobias Rumer_

One minute to midnight, Christmas Eve. Both Muggle and magical denizens of London alike are at home with their friends and families, some of them sleeping peacefully, dreaming of the joyous morning to come; others still wide awake in anticipation for Big Ben to strike twelve, wanting to greet the cheerful holiday with bright smiles, laughter, and love. These things, tragically, are not to be found this Christmas.

Midnight, Christmas morning, seven reported groups of Death Eaters, servants of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, waged war on the city of Muggle London, brutally killing, maiming, and in some cases even torturing whomever was unfortunate enough to stumble into their path. The Ministry of Magic acted without pause, but in vain -- due to the rumours of a massive Death Eater attack on Muggle-born witches and wizards, their finest Aurors had been deployed throughout the magical section of the city, and were caught off-guard when it turned out to be the Muggles themselves that the servants of You-Know-Who had planned on eradicating. In the end, one-hundred-twenty-two Muggles were killed, along with Robert and Gertrude Pryce, a Muggle-born couple, Henry Blotch and Duncan Blink, two Ministry Obliviators who had been attempting to....

Gwendolyn trailed her eyes off the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ and took a sip of her tea. It was a hair past eight in the morning.

Nott had gotten her home at around half-past two, and had waited until she had safely climbed up the ivy-ridden wall and through the still-open window to her room before he left. He really was quite the chivalrous boy -- she would have to thank him properly the next time she saw him.

She would have liked to have written in her diary about the events that were still swimming in her head, but she wouldn't be able to buy a new one until tomorrow -- yet another reminder of her discontentment with Pansy Parkinson. As it was, she had whispered the story to Morgaine, who listened tolerantly as Gwendolyn insisted on describing everything in great detail.

She'd 'risen' not a quarter of an hour ago, and after changing into some clean clothes, found her mother sitting at the dining table. She sat down after ordering from Dippy a cup of tea, and her had mother pushed the newspaper toward her with a sombre look.

"Your father got called in," Mrs. Cross said quietly when her daughter had finished reading, her tone somewhat detached and oddly morose. "I highly doubt he'll be home today. Looks like it's just you and me for Christmas this year."

Gwendolyn said nothing, unsure of how to react to her mother's mood. In her anxiousness, she hadn't taken into account the effect the attack would have on the part of the holiday that occurred during daylight hours. No point in feeling remorseful about it -- she hadn't been personally involved in any of the murders, not really. But oh, what her mother would say if she knew what her little girl had been up to last night...Gwendolyn would never tell her, of course -- she wasn't quite _that_ ready to meet Death for the final time yet.

Mrs. Cross exhaled a low sigh and rubbed her temples with her fingertips. It was doubtful that she had slept yet, and the passing minutes were beginning to wear her down. Still, when she looked at Gwendolyn, a weak smile graced her pretty features.

"Well, moping about never solves anything," she said, trying to sound upbeat, and knowing that she was failing. "Let's go into the parlour and open your presents, hm? Dippy will take pictures. It'll make your father happy to know we're not sulking like petulant children."

Gwendolyn nodded and rose to follow her mother out of the room as Dippy scurried off upstairs to retrieve her father's camera from his study. In a few minutes, she had her mother were forcing smiles for different reasons in the name of overcoming a depressive atmosphere with good humour.

"Say 'merry Christmas', Misses!" Dippy said, her grin wide as ever behind the camera. The two women exchanged a fleeting look and put their best faces forward with the composure of the well-to-do. The camera clicked, and with a puff of brilliant violet smoke, the lie was trapped in a photograph. Gwendolyn wondered if the developed picture would betray them, if her mother would show up on the verge of tears, and if her own smile would reflect the psychotic frivolities of the night before in which her mind was dwelling. 


	8. Shaking

**Part 8 -- Shaking**

He had decided not to return to the castle until late in the evening the next day, allowing himself complete seclusion in his estate from the rest of the world to reflect upon recent events. The only communication he'd received and responded to had been just before he sat down to dinner Christmas evening, when Lucius had spoken with him about the success of the attack through the fireplace in his sitting room. The blond man had been cordially professional when he informed Snape that not a single Death Eater had been captured by the Ministry, though Ulianov had taken a bullet to the back from a Muggle man who had attempted to fight back. The Muggle was no longer among the living, of course -- Malfoy had mumbled something about metal gums, and that had been the end of the matter.

Now, Snape was once again in his private chambers at Hogwarts, a cup of tea in one hand and a book in the other.

_"There's one other flower in the garden that can move about like you," said the Rose. "I wonder how you do it---" ("You're always wondering," said the Tiger-lily), "but she's more bushy than you are."_

_"Is she like me?" Alice asked eagerly, for the thought crossed her mind, "There's another little girl in the garden, somewhere!"_

_"Well, she has the same awkward shape as you," the Rose said; "but she's redder---and her petals are shorter, I think."_

Severus Snape, reading a children's story. Oh, wouldn't Black have a field day with that one...

_"They're done up close, like a dahlia," said the Tiger-lily: "not tumbled about, like yours." "But that's not _your fault_," the Rose added kindly. "You're beginning to fade, you know---and then one can't help one's petals getting a little untidy."_

He turned the page and took a sip of his tea, justifying his mental recitation of the book with the pretext that his mind wasn't really on it at all -- which was true, in a sense.

His eyes ached as they ran over the words, the quirked little turns of speech and opium-hazed aura always so prevalent in Dodgson's fictional works. "Life, what is it but a dream?" the man had written, a limerick that had always puzzled Snape, though he'd never discussed it with anyone but himself, as he deemed most simple-mind philosophical phrases and their argument a waste of breath. But there was no stopping the machinery of his formidable mind from turning 'round, and he had scoffed at the dream-life notion more than once. Life was what one made of it -- dream, nightmare, or anything else -- on that much he agreed. What was death, then? The antithesis of life? Or merely the next aspect of it? If life was indeed a dream, and death was waking up...he didn't much care to think about that. His dreams were real enough as it was, and he didn't particularly fancy the idea that he died after each nightly dance.

No, he couldn't escape that dance. It lingered in his consciousness a perfumed breeze, sometimes smelling of spices, others of peppermint, and always fleeing when he picked up its scent, leading his mind in a futile chase to discover just what exactly it was that continued to elude him. From time to time, he could have sworn it had barely slipped through his fingers; he'd been so close he could almost taste her presence as it faded from his psyche...

He wasn't even quite sure who it was he was searching for anymore -- the figment from the dreams, or the trance in the alleyway...perhaps they were one in the same. Perhaps they were no one, nothing but a displaced, delusional coping device wrenched from an overburdened mind that he would be forever fated to glimpse through pinpricked walls. He didn't know which he would prefer. He supposed he didn't much care. He simply wanted to _know_, to get at the root of the problem so he could at last dig it up and be rid of it, rid of the constant feel of her feather-pale skin on his own, of the sweet coppery tang she'd left in his mouth with that hot tongue and those frozen lips.

The only thing Snape was certain of was that this...this whatever it was, was no ally of his. He hadn't before faced an enemy so clever, clever enough to realise that his most potent weakness was that of distraction -- not any one thing, mind you, but distraction itself, the inability to keep his mind in one place. To Snape, scattered thoughts were as effectively crippling as blindness, made worse by the fact that his body took pleasure in it against his will. It was the most cutting betrayal, and the most cunning of conspiracies -- in obscuring his head, she'd succeeded in obscuring his ability to make sense of who she was, had turned his own tactics against him: Hiding the answer in plain sight.

_How flattering,_ he thought bitterly, _an enemy after my own heart._

He set the teacup on a nearby end table, ran his thumbnail over the corner of the page he was on to mark his place, and rose. Though the old wizard would keep his distance and allow the Potions master at least a day's time to collect himself as he always did after Snape returned from a mission, Dumbledore would still be wanting to see him as soon as possible. It was best just to get it over with.

* * *

Gwendolyn tucked her legs up beneath her on the window seat as she gazed out at the now-peaceful sky. No more brilliant acid-green-on-violent-violet contrast. Her father had returned home at mid-day, though only for a shower and shave before he was off again. Now the house was enveloped in a stagnant silence, and the air was thick with grief and languor, almost chokingly so. It wasn't the great tragedy that the _Daily_ and _Evening Prophets_ kept blathering on about that caused her dejection -- rather, it was the loss of it. Christmas morning had brought with it something wondrous and exhilarating, but now that it was past, and the shock of others was wearing off...it felt as though she had lost a childhood playmate.

The Muggle papers, a Mr. Tobias Rumer claimed, had explained away the death count by ascertaining that there had been a mass holiday suicide cult, though no one seemed quite sure of that, as the bodies didn't appear to have ever been 'officially' discovered. Over half of Muggle London had had its memory of the night modified, and the Obliviators would probably have their hands full for days to come. Of course, that was true of most everyone -- there hadn't been a capable Ministry employee who hadn't been called in that night, as far as Gwendolyn could tell.

Still, Mrs. Cross was a firm believer in getting things back to normal as soon as possible regardless of however sombre the occasion, and had not protested when her daughter went alone to Diagon Alley early that morning. ("Of course you can go. After what happened, I can't think of a safer time for it. Peoples' eyes are open now.") A few of the shops had been closed, but Flourish and Blotts hadn't been one of them, and Gwendolyn had returned with all spanking new schoolbooks and diary, the latter of which she'd wasted no time writing in, ripping into, and then burning what she'd torn out. _Oh, it must have been such a hectic night for you!_ she'd written to Death. _Could you feel me, I wonder, as you scavenged the carrion for souls? I could feel you, close enough to taste._ Indeed. Not a moment had passed since that night when her mind did not return to that pitch-black alleyway, if only for a second.

Other than the papers, the magical community was strangely mum about the historical events of that Christmas. It was a popular topic of conversation, from what Gwendolyn had gathered from her visit to Diagon Alley, but it was a vague one. Solemn faces floated above numb bodies in the streets, mumbling and whispering this and that. She'd caught only snippets of what had been said, but was able to piece them together in her head until they formed a sort of jigsaw puzzle of clues, rumours and facts of what had happened, of what others had seen or heard.

"Terrible thing, just terrible," one man had muttered, shaking his head. The woman at his side hadn't responded, but her mouth had been pulled taut in agreement.

"It can't be happening again," another, aging woman had gasped out to her companion over a steaming cup of tea. "It simply _can't_."

"Don't be a fool, Brunhilde," her companion had replied, but had stopped herself before saying any more. A younger man in a brown fedora had not been so cautious.

"I don't understand why everyone's so frightened," he'd said. "Hand You-Know-Who a baby and he'll be gone before New Year." 

His friend had laughed. Imprudent, ignorant children, the both of them. They hadn't been old enough to understand what war was during Voldemort's first rise to power. Nor had Gwendolyn, for that matter, but she devoured history texts like they were fine chocolates, and knew a great deal more about the past goings-on than most students her age.

The fact of the matter was, Harry Potter wasn't a baby anymore. He was fifteen years old, and had already been forced to grow up faster than a child should be expected to. Over the last four-and-one-half years, he had been made to deal with things, tremendous things that no doubt weighed heavily on his shoulders. There was no guarantee that Potter would always be as lucky as he had been against the Dark Lord, and no way of knowing how these annual battles between the two of them in some form or another would affect him. Gwendolyn scarcely knew the boy -- she'd watched Malfoy insult him a number of times, but had never spoken to him directly -- and yet, only by looking at him, judging him by his small, scrawny form, his owlish spectacles and sloppy black hair...he honestly didn't look as though he had the strength to keep up with what was expected of him, and all it would take would be just one moment of weakness...

Responsibility. It all depended on how mature Potter truly was, if he was willing to take responsibility for living up to the faith placed in him by the magical community. It was a lot to ask of a boy who did nothing more remarkable than live. Perhaps too much.

Gwendolyn shrugged thoughts of Potter away. They were shiftless ruminations, and she had far more appealing things to consider than the Light side's rather poor excuse for a weapon -- namely Nott's words to her as he'd escorted her home on Christmas morning.

_"You're the history buff, you figure it out."_

And she had resolved to do just that. It was a vague clue, but more of one than she needed. The only thing that kept her from already having figured out why Nott apparently had immunity to the Death Eaters, why he spoke so gravely when the conversation turned toward Professor Snape, was the remaining week of the winter holidays. The Cross library was a formidable one, but it lacked the more recent historical publishings. Gwendolyn already had a gut feeling of what those answers would tell her, but the need to be positively certain -- as only the boorish make fractional assumptions -- overshadowed that instinct. One should never go off half-cocked concerning such delicate affairs; to do so would have been most undeniably inconsiderate. Gwendolyn enjoyed history, and she would not pay it such disrespect by not having her facts straight. Morgaine leapt up to sit in front of her on the window seat. Gwendolyn scratched her neck affectionately, and the feline looked pointedly towards her master's new schoolbooks and gave a pointed meow. "I know, I know," Gwendolyn sighed. "I'll get to my homework tomorrow. I can't concentrate right now. Are you hungry, love?" Morgaine let out a rumbling, affirmative purr. "Come on, then. The house-elves are probably all asleep by now, but don't think I'm _completely_ lacking in culinary skills." The cat tilted her head sceptically, and Gwendolyn rolled her eyes. "Fine. A sandwich, then. I can't do much damage by spreading things on bread, right?" More scepticism. "Oh, shut up. Let's go."

* * *

Snape descended down the moving staircase that took him from the headmaster's office to the school corridors, a mixture of emotions bubbling beneath the Stoic surface of his sallow skin. Dumbledore had been both livid and mournful of the calamitous mistakes the Ministry of Magic had made, so much so that more than once, the Potions master could have sworn he saw the old wizard's wrinkled flesh crawl with furious disturbance.

"Cornelius Fudge is a blind fool," he'd spat, the usual twinkle gone from his sagacious blue eyes, and in its place, occasional glimpses of the wild, white-hot power that age and wisdom had bestowed upon him. Snape had seen similar eyes before -- those of Drusilla Lestrange came to mind, though in hers, the power was born of ice, not fire. He'd kept the likeness to himself, as well as the thought that Fudge was perhaps not the only fool in their midst.

It was true that Albus Dumbledore was quite probably the greatest Light wizard of the century, but it was a title that awarded him weakness along with its glory. He wanted so very much to find the good in people, and was so eager to trust that there wasn't a man or woman on earth who didn't possess the slightest ounce....He was just so damn willing to _forgive_, a shortcoming Snape had never been able to understand. Where Dumbledore trusted unless given a valid reason not to, Snape never believed a word that passed his ears unless it was proved, before his eyes, to be true. It was a practice that had never failed to serve him well. He placed his faith in nothing and no one other than himself -- a jaded point of view, yes, but a hell of a lot better than a raw dead one.

He rounded the corner to the stairwell that would lead him from the Main Hall to the dungeons, expecting his blackened halls to be empty. It took him by surprise when a familiar voice murmured "_Lumos_" behind him, though he hid it ably behind a curling sneer when he turned to regard who had been skulking around his darkened corridors.

"Potter," he hissed dangerously, "what are you doing here? Return to your dormitory at once."

But young Harry Potter made no move to do as his Potions professor ordered. The green eyes he'd inherited from his mother glittered in the dim wandlight, and his mouth formed a hard, glaring line. He wasted no time in throwing a stack of yellow-grey parchments at Snape's chest, his angry stare unwavering as the older wizard caught them before they fell.

Snape glanced down once and saw that the parchments were in actuality a copy of Christmas morning's_ Daily Prophet_. The bold, grisly headline stared defiantly up at him, and he turned his tunnel-black gaze back to the skinny Gryffindor boy, his eyes narrowing severely.

"Tell me you had nothing to do with this," Potter said, finally, through gritted teeth. His free left hand clenched and unclenched into a fist at his side, and for a moment Snape had to smother the urge to laugh. He sneered at the boy and let the paper fall from his hands. It separated into pieces and landed with a soft crinkling sound on the stone floor, and the Potions master turned to leave without a word. Potter would have none of it -- he grabbed Snape's arm roughly and spun the man around to face him. "No. Dumbledore might let you walk away from your responsibilities, but I won't."

Snape jerked his arm out of the boy's grasp; whatever amusement Potter may have given him dissipated, and anger took its place. "Lay a hand on me again, _child_, and I can assure you you'll be the one regretting your actions. I am your superior, and you will not show me such disrespect."

"My teacher, maybe," The Boy Who Lived ground out, "my superior, never. Did you take part in this?" he demanded again. "Did you kill those innocent people?"

"Fifteen points from Gryffindor for your insolence, Potter. Another word and it will be fifty. My actions, whatever they may be, are of no concern to you outside of my classroom. I advise you to accept that fact quickly."

"I will _not_!" Harry yelled, his voice bouncing off the corridor walls and his face flushing pink with fury. He advanced toward Snape with every exclamation, until his eyes weren't a breath away from the Potions master's. "It does concern me! _Everything Voldemort does concerns me_! He lost his body_ because of me_ -- he came back _because of me_, because of _my_ blood! If you so much as harmed a hair on any of those Muggles' heads, it's _because of me_! Their blood is on _my_ hands! Damn you for saying this is none of my concern!"

"Foolish child!" Snape hissed, incensed by the boy's words. "You know nothing that happens beyond your own beloved bubble of a world! _You_ are not the beginning and end you think you are, Potter -- there are other factors, factors that would melt the flesh from your body and make your very bones scream until the blood within them curdled into crimson dust. I know -- I've seen it done. Do you want to know, Potter? Do you? Would you like a detailed description of the things I've been made to witness, the things I've been made to do? You haven't even begun to glimpse the essence of the nightmares that no doubt keep you awake at night. Every drop of cold sweat, every ragged breath....You haven't even begun to realise what true terror is."

He bore down on his most loathed pupil with his ink-black gaze, flashes of bloodshot rage spider-webbing out from their darkness. The boy had paled considerably and now looked smaller than ever, though he stood his ground in a show of righteous Gryffindor pride that made Snape want to spit in disgust.

"What's going on? Who's down there?" a foreign voice, much older and gruffer-sounding than the ones that had been filling the dungeons not seconds ago, floated down from the stairwell. 

Ah, yes, Mundungus Fletcher. Professor Fletcher to the students; at Hogwarts under the guise of employment as the newest Muggle Studies instructor alongside his 'wife', Arabella Figg-Fletcher. Yet more bodyguards put in place for precious Potter's personal safety. As he cautiously treaded around the corner, Snape noticed that the aging wizard was not alone. Bristling obediently at Fletcher's side was a large black dog that didn't belong to Remus Lupin, no matter what the versipellis alleged. At the sight of the Potions master and Harry Potter scowling nose-to-nose, the dog's ears flattened back, and it released a warning growl. 

"Save it for someone who will actually buy into it, Black," Snape snarled, and not a moment later, the animal had dissolved, and in its place was a man Snape would have been overjoyed to watch rot in Azkaban.

"Harry," Sirius Black said quietly, a tick in his voice like that of a bomb ready to go off at the slightest jostling. "Come here."

Potter hesitated, swaying a bit on the balls of his feet before backing away from Snape to join his godfather. Snape rolled his eyes dramatically.

"Afraid I'm going to bruise the fragile child?" he asked, his tone dripping molasses sarcasm.

"No," Black shook his head. "But I was rather concerned he'd get pinned beneath your overlarge nose. Imagine if you sneezed -- he'd be drowned in an instant. It would be a difficult thing to explain to Dumbledore, don't you think?"

Potter tried and failed to hide a smirk, and Snape's upper lip curled back further in distaste. "Reduced to petty insults, Black? I've heard a Dementor's Kiss can do wonders for a person's wit. Pity they don't know you're here -- though I'd be more than happy to inform them of your whereabouts."

"I'll bet," Black muttered. "I'm sure it would have you getting your rocks off for months to have me---"

"Gentlemen," Fletcher intervened, his handlebar moustache twitching as he frowned. "I'm sure we could all find better uses for our time than trading paltry adolescent remarks, especially during days as dark as these."

"Unless one of us is contributing to that darkness," Potter mumbled beneath his breath. Fletcher, though nearing his centennial, still had ears sharp as needles, and regarded the boy with a disapproving look.

"Mr. Potter," he said lowly, though his murky brown gaze was fixed on Snape as he spoke, "you above all others should understand that the world is full of shades of grey, not just black and white. It is late; you should be in bed. Sirius will escort you back to your dormitory."

Black shot one last glare at his childhood rival before diminishing into his Animagus form and trotting alongside his godson as they started up the steps, heading for Gryffindor Tower. Fletcher lingered, lighting his own wand with the absence of Harry's for light and taking his eyes off Snape only long enough to bend down and retrieve the fallen copy of the _Daily Prophet_ from the ground. He glanced once at the headline, once at Snape with narrowed eyes, and then left the dungeons with a polite "Goodnight to you, Mr. Snape." The younger man didn't respond.

* * *

She saw her father only twice over the next week, and both times he hadn't had time for anything more than a bath and a change of clothes. It upset her mother -- though Mrs. Cross refused to outwardly show such displays of 'feminine trifles' -- enough to drive her out of the house and to the Ministry with the excuse that, with Mr. Cross working so hard, she couldn't very well just sit at home and do nothing with her days. Gwendolyn barely saw anyone other than Dippy for nearly a week, until New Year's Day, when she encountered a rather pleasant surprise.

"Gwendolyn dear," Mrs. Cross had said, her head peering around the corner of her daughter's door. Gwendolyn looked questioningly up from where she had been sitting on her bed, Transfiguration book and homework assignment sitting in front of her. "I'm having Narcissa Malfoy and her son over for tea this afternoon. Do dress appropriately, would you? And be in the sitting room no later than ten to four."

Gwendolyn nodded, and Mrs. Cross disappeared from view. Tea with Malfoy and his mum -- this would certainly be interesting. Gwendolyn hadn't written back to him after his Christmas Eve letter, as she couldn't think of anything to say to him that wouldn't give away how easily she had disregarded his warning. There would be no avoiding that now. More curious still was that her mother was entertaining guests in the first place. Back in New York, she would occasionally have Mrs. Audrey Langston, her closest friend, over for a meal or drinks, and once the Crosses had held a costume party on Halloween while Gwendolyn had been away at Asgarth, but other than that, they weren't exceedingly active social people, least of all Mrs. Cross.

No, this meeting had a purpose other than societal pleasantries -- of that, Gwendolyn was sure. Yet another mystery to add to her growing collection. 

She glanced at her clock -- she had half an hour to get ready. Setting her homework aside, she rose and went over to her wardrobe, choosing from it a set of deep green robes that were properly elegant but not overtly dressy. She left her hair in its usual French braid, and retreated into her bathroom to brush her teeth again and apply a little makeup. 

When she arrived downstairs at the designated time, her mother was already sitting on the cream-coloured Victorian-style sofa as Dippy scurried about, arranging savouries, scones and sweets on a large tiered plate and making sure a dish of fruit was filled to the brim with grapes and lemon and orange slices. The house-elf was silent and straight-faced, concentrating on the work at hand with the meticulous dedication that had earned her the stature to be deemed worthy of appearing in public with her master and mistresses. 

The navy velvet curtains of the room had been drawn, and lavender-scented candles had been lit in place of the oil sconces and natural light, though rather than giving the room a cosy, informal air, the effect seemed to mirror that of the foreboding torch-lit dungeons at Hogwarts. Gwendolyn had no complaints. 

"You look nice," Mrs. Cross commented, surveying her daughter's appearance with a tiny smile, which Gwendolyn returned with a thank you. "Now," she continued, "I don't want you mentioning the ugly business of Christmas morning. Remember, you're to---" 

"Speak only when I am spoken to, yes, Mother." 

"Don't start, young lady," Mrs. Cross reprimanded, lifting one well-groomed eyebrow warningly. 

"I'm sorry. But I honestly can't imagine taking tea to be that much different than the lunches with Mrs. Langston. I'm not a complete stranger to etiquette, you know." 

"I know, dear. You're a good girl. I'm just...under a lot of stress right now. Please don't be difficult today." 

One of Gwendolyn's hands flew daintily to her heart, and she looked mock-appalled at the very suggestion. "Me? Difficult? You jest!" 

Mrs. Cross smirked as the doorbell jingled, and Dippy hurried to answer it. "Humour your mother," she said as she rose to greet Mrs. Malfoy and Draco after Dippy had taken their cloaks and led them into the sitting room. Both had dressed well for the occasion, Mrs. Malfoy in robes of silvery taffeta that nearly matched her hair, and Draco in his usual fine black. 

"Narcissa, how lovely to see you," Mrs. Cross smiled. The two women air-kissed a hello, Draco kissed both Cross women's hands, and the four took their seats, the mothers on the sofa, and their children in corresponding chairs on at either end of the coffee table like silent, moving ornaments. Dippy wasted no time in filling the teacups and offering milk, sugar and lemon to their guests. 

"One lump or two?" she asked Draco. 

"Two," he replied, earning himself a Look from his mother until he amended, "please." 

The conversation topics revolved around many things Gwendolyn really couldn't have cared less about -- mainly superficial gossip ripe with rampant prejudice concerning other pure-blood families and the unsightly scandals they were involved in. Apparently Hannah Abbott's family made their living breeding winged horses. One had escaped and mated with a Muggle's horse, and the Ministry had to be called in to Obliviate the owners and retrieve the foal. 

"Can you believe they didn't dispose of the thing?" Mrs. Malfoy scoffed, half-aghast, half-astonished. "I heard they're actually going to allow it to breed with the other horses when it comes of age. I'll never understand Hufflepuff families. They practically jump at the chance to mix with everything Muggle; it's such a horrid practice." 

"They sound a great deal like the Heimdalr families in America," Mrs. Cross said empathetically. "I do believe their standards fell into the gutter some years ago." 

"It's families like the Abbotts that mar the pure-blood title," Mrs. Malfoy continued, looking down her nose as she spoke. "Families like the Muggle-loving Weasleys and the meddling Boneses. With the way they carry on, you could almost mistake them for Mudbloods. How can they deviate from our ways as they do and think it a natural progression?" 

"It's the younger generations, I think." Gwendolyn's and Draco's ears perked a bit, and they exchanged glances. "The more unaccepted an abnormality is, the more they want to exploit it. Fortunately, the family name and heritage still mean something to some." Mrs. Cross looked pointedly at the quiet teenagers. Draco sat a little straighter in his chair, and Mrs. Malfoy smirked in an elitist sort of way. 

"Yes," the blonde woman nodded graciously in agreement. "Fortunately." 

Eventually, conversation turned toward the Ministry of Magic itself, and Gwendolyn and Draco were excused from the table so that the two women could discuss matters of a more reticent nature -- most likely the actual purpose of the tea. Both gripped by curiosity, they waited just outside of the sitting room to eavesdrop, but in vain. Gwendolyn heard Mrs. Malfoy murmur something soft and Latin-sounding, and the next moment, all had gone absolutely quiet. 

"A Silencing Charm," Malfoy hissed under his breath, disgruntled. "Unless you've got an invisibility cloak somewhere, we're stuck talking to each other." 

"Terribly sorry -- it looks as though we'll have to converse amongst ourselves." 

He let out a laboured sigh and nodded at the winding staircase. "Show me around, then?" 

"With pleasure." 

Malfoy offered her his arm with a cocky smirk that matched his mother's. She accepted it, hooking her own arm in his, and they started up the stairs. 

He ended up conceding that the house wasn't anything like Malfoy Manor, but it was generous enough to be passable. Gwendolyn's room had been the last stop, of course, and it was there that they now lounged, Malfoy sprawled on the window seat amidst the stuffed animals, and Gwendolyn on her bed, finishing up McGonagall's homework as they talked.

"You haven't finished that yet?" the blond boy queried, his pale brows knitting together. 

"I dawdle," Gwendolyn answered simply. "It won't take me ten minutes to get it done. Essays are my speciality." 

Malfoy only shrugged. "If you say so." 

"I do." She paused at the top of a roll of parchment, her quill hovering above it until she decided on a sentence and began to write: _Contrary to popular belief, Animagi do not have a choice of which animal form they take. An Animagus becomes whichever animal is best reflected by his or her own temperament and appearance. Bartholomew the Blind, for instance, was a small and rather round wizard with a pointed nose and knobbly hands, and was something of a recluse. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that his Animagus form was that of a mole's._

She looked up at Malfoy, who'd grown bored of staring out the window and was now poking inquisitively around her room, scratching Morgaine once, examining knick-knacks and anything else that happened to catch his eye. He stopped when he came to a brown paper shopping bag labelled 'Solemates by Heelhorn', bent down, and began to rifle through its contents. 

"What the hell is this?" he asked, holding up a pristine pink toe-shoe at arm's length as though it were contaminated with Nancy-boy cooties. 

"It isn't obvious?" 

"Well, yeah, but what's it doing in _your_ room?" 

"I use it to threaten Dippy when she gets cheeky. _Honestly_, Malfoy," Gwendolyn huffed, rolling her eyes. "I'm a dancer -- or I used to be, at least. I wanted to start again, so Mum took me down to Diagon Alley yesterday to get some new things." 

"_You're_ a dancer?" Malfoy blinked disbelievingly. "But you're...I mean, dancing's so...so girly, and you're..." 

"Bloody weird?" she offered. 

"I was going to say 'not', but that works just as well." He replaced the shoe with its counterpart and turned his eyes slyly onto her. "Speaking of Nott, how goes the little love-fest with Titus?" 

"There is as much of a 'love-fest' between Titus and I as there is deep emotional attachment between Pansy and yourself." 

Malfoy shuddered involuntarily, but kept on regardless. "I don't believe you." 

"Your beliefs are of no concern to me," she mumbled, now back to writing her essay. 

"Oh, come off it, Cross. Everyone knows he fancies you. Casca Warrington owled me, and he said that Nott said that your little Knockturn Alley visit together was a date." 

"He said no such thing. If there _was_ a date, I certainly wasn't in attendance of it." 

"Casca also told me Nott found you wandering the Muggle streets early Christmas morning." 

Gwendolyn stopped writing. So _that_ was what this little interrogation was about. Nott had nothing to do with it. 

"Casca says a lot of things, doesn't he?" 

Malfoy raised a fair eyebrow questioningly. "He does. He was also wondering why you'd be fool enough to do what you did, even after an acquaintance of his apparently warned you away from doing it." 

"Was he, now? Perhaps someone should tell him that my actions are none of his business." 

"Perhaps. Perhaps he thinks you should consider your decisions about which information to ignore and which to heed more carefully in the future." 

"Then perhaps his _acquaintance_ should give more specific information." 

"Or perhaps you need to more quickly learn the value of the information given." 

Sighing, Gwendolyn pulled herself up so that she was sitting on her knees and stared at the other Slytherin with exasperation. "And is this acquaintance of Casca's immensely angry with me for disregarding his admonition?" she asked, and Malfoy contested her look with a semi-glare. 

"Not immensely angry, no, but he's exceptionally annoyed that his word means about as much to you as a smear of dung on your shoe, especially when he needn't have told you anything at all." 

"Let's drop the faux obscurity, shall we? It's a bit confusing. I apologise if you feel betrayed, Malfoy, but I figured you might know me a little better than to think you could just drop something like that into my lap and then expect me not to investigate it." 

"I didn't expect you not to be curious," he muttered, "but I also didn't expect you to completely snub my advice and go prancing around London with all that was going on. I know you're American, but you're like Professor Binns' translucent wet dream with how well you do in history -- I thought you'd know enough to realise that the Dark Mark is not a good thing to those not in the Dark Lord's favour. You may as well have put up a flashing sign that read 'victim' on your forehead. If any of them found you..." he trailed off, reddening in the same way Nott had Christmas morning. Lo and behold, if for drastically different reasons, both boys actually seemed to care whether or not she lived or died. 

_And he calls ME the bloody weird one..._ Gwendolyn thought to herself. 

"They didn't find me," she half-lied, choosing to omit the alleyway encounter she'd had with one of the Death Eaters. "I found them, though." She paused, searching for some sort of reaction on Malfoy's face. His eyes widened ever so slightly, but other than that, there was none. She took that as a sign to continue, to let him know what she had done that night if it hadn't been what he had advised -- she could repay him that much for his thoughtfulness. "They were amazing," she went on. "Seven of them, that I saw. I was crouched behind a trash bin when they started in on a Muggle woman. I've never seen anything like it -- they skinned her back in the shape of the Dark Mark, and then one of them pulled out her backbone. They mounted the hide to it, flipped her over, and used her stomach as the foundation for their makeshift signpost. It was..." She closed her eyes at the memory, and exhaled a slow breath -- an action that definitely wasn't caused by nausea. "...it was so delightfully wicked." 

She opened her eyes, and caught Malfoy giving her the strangest look of befuddlement and some dismay. For a few moments, he merely stared at her with his mouth open, until something that was almost a smile touched his eyes and he gave a little cough of laughter. 

"Ye gods," he said, shaking his head. "I really was right about you." 

"Bloody weird?" 

"I was thinking 'completely bonkers', but again, yes, bloody weird fits in snugly enough." 

Gwendolyn smirked and was about to respond when there was a soft knock at her door. "Come in," she called, and the door opened to reveal both mothers looking rather relaxed and pleased with themselves. 

"Draco, it's time we were leaving," Mrs. Malfoy told her son, who nodded once and turned to Gwendolyn. 

"I'll see you on the train tomorrow." 

"Of course," she replied as he kissed her hand in a good-bye. She turned to his mother, who appeared satisfied at the gentlemanly gesture. "It was wonderful to see you again, Mrs. Malfoy." 

"And you, Gwendolyn," the woman replied with a polite nod. Mrs. Cross offered to show them out, and the three left Gwendolyn alone in her room. 

With a pleasant sigh, she collapsed once again on her bed. As she returned to her essay, she couldn't help but pity poor Bartholomew the Blind for not being able to see the extraordinary events that this marvellous world had allowed to transpire in the last few days. What a misfortune he had been dealt. What a misfortune, indeed... 

* * *

Snape took his seat at the High Table at dinnertime, today between Sinistra and Lupin and across from Morag MacDougal and Belinda Quinn, both Ravenclaw girls, a fifth-year and seventh-year respectively. More students than usual had remained at Hogwarts over the holidays, as there were some parents who had taken the rancorous rumours of Voldemort's rising to heart. Christmas had proved them correct, and Snape was sure that they were now wiping their brows in relief that their cherished little bundles had been under the watchful eye of Albus Dumbledore that auspicious night.

"You're late," Sinistra hissed at him, deviating away from her conversation of lunar effects on magic with the Quinn girl. "Why are you late? You're usually allergic to late."

Snape held back a sigh as he piled some mashed potatoes on his plate. "Relapse," he mumbled shortly. The Astronomy professor regarded him with a look of quizzical disbelief, but returned to her previous chat with the student in front of her.

He hadn't been lying -- not completely. The illness he'd professed to be wrought with on Christmas Eve and the two days following it had all been a hoax, of course, but since then he had indeed fallen back into the habit of sipping from the Draught of the Living Death to sustain some form of rest at night. The woman in the alleyway had subdued his craving, yes, but it had been but a temporary fix -- she had taken his fever, but she could not wholly remove the potion from his system, and after the confrontation with Potter in the dungeons, he'd just been so very tired...

_You are weak,_ his mind would whisper to him in the dead of night, when he would raise the brandy snifter to his lips and imagine himself back in the bowels of Muggle London. 

"I am weak because I need rest," he told himself as the mingling heat and ice would hit his tongue. "This gives me rest. It makes me stronger." 

_Strength cannot be found in so convenient a crutch. You are weak for allowing this to happen in the first place. Have you learned nothing in the past thirteen years?_

"...perhaps not. No. Everything is as it was before." 

_You fool. Nothing is the same. Nothing will ever be the same again._

He played out this nightly routine -- draught, darkness, dance, darkness, dawn -- without fail, and so versed was he in its practice that he often found himself filled with a bitter sense of irony that he could go through the motions in his sleep, if it hadn't been the lack thereof that had driven him to them in the first place.

Presently, he would have liked to eat his meal in silence. Where Sinistra was more often than not accepting of his muted demeanour, regrettably, Lupin was not. 

"Severus," the versipellis began, his voice hushed to a conspirator's murmur, "I do believe I may be coming down with something." 

Snape took a drink of wine from his goblet, his eyes shifting to glare sideways at the bedraggled turnskin as he muttered, "Is this meant to vex me?" Lupin looked somewhat confused. 

"...it might become something of a vexation, yes, if you don't perchance aid me in preparing an antidote?" The final three words were forcibly said, and it dawned on Snape what exactly the Dark Arts professor was riddling on about -- the Wolfsbane Potion. In his unfocused state, the thought to make it had completely slipped his mind, and the moon was waxing steadily fuller with each passing night -- three more until Lupin would transform. Under normal circumstances, he would have it ready by now, if only to be certain....No wonder the scruffy man had enquired of its alacrity. 

"Your troubles are unnecessary, Lupin," he assured the other wizard. "I will have the potion you require arranged for your consumption with time to spare. And," he added, his thin lips slipping along his teeth in a sneer, "you realise you needn't be so secretive of your...condition. Not any longer." 

Lupin shut his eyes briefly in a wince. "Old habits die hard, Severus. You of all people should know how true that rings." 

"I suppose I should," Snape said, resignation leaking into his tone. The comment might have made him suspicious, but there was nothing Lupin could call him on that wouldn't jeopardise whatever it was they thought they were trying to accomplish these days. That, and for all the feral wildness that the shorter man was capable of one day out of each month, the turnskin simply didn't possess the animosity essential to put the effort into bringing about another's downfall. 

He was a touch like Dumbledore in that respect -- he was a firm advocate of peace and tolerance, and would step into conflict with the sole purpose of easing it away. They were men that could not see the intricately-woven joy of war. Where Voldemort and his followers thrived on the battle, on the clever amusement of strategy and the tactile feeling of victory and accomplishment that they gained from it, Dumbledore and Lupin saw every task as an obligation, every fight a duty. They took no pleasure in what was achieved unless it was a checkmate, and even then their celebration of it was dimmed with a sense of nobility. 

It has often been said that, in order for a pupil to do well in school, they must enjoy what they are learning. The same could be said for the way the rest of their life carries out. If someone enjoys their occupation, they will most likely do well -- that was where Voldemort's followers had an edge on the side of Light. They enjoyed the atrocities they committed, and good people...good people could never enjoy putting a stop to them without becoming tainted with their darkness. It was that impression of 'not sinking to their level' that held back the Aurors and men like Albus Dumbledore and Remus Lupin from truly winning. It would have been the most potent and effective weapon -- but they all feared for their souls far too much to ever employ it. The Dark Lord was rising even more rapidly than before, and there was no Potter baby to save them this time when he reached the height of his power. He would come for them all, eventually, and unless they sacrificed some part of themselves to the darkness... 

Sometimes one must paint the roses red, lest one lose their head. 

Snape dropped his fork onto his plate with a loud clatter that caused several heads to swivel in his direction before he stood, tossed his napkin on the table, and left the Great Hall. His appetite had fled in favour of thirst, one that could only be quenched in the dungeon torchlight. The students would be returning to the castle tomorrow, after all. His Slytherins would expect their cold Head of House to be precisely that, and he couldn't very well disappoint them with the fever that perpetually danced along his skin. 


	9. Waking (Danse de Mort, Act Two)

This one's for Faith, because she _finally posted a story (and for me!) and because she gave me the most unexpectedly splendiferous review ever. I heart my Faithie. ^_^_

**Part 9 – Waking**

**(Danse de Mort, Act Two)**

                The second of January, and platform nine and three-quarters was just as hectic as it had been two weeks earlier, when the Hogwarts Express had been arriving at the station rather than preparing to leave it. Around certain families seeing their children off, skittish circles had formed as though people feared they would catch a dreaded infection were they to get too close. These families consisted mostly of mothers and sons – Mrs. Crabbe turned out to be every bit as large as her son, while Mrs. Goyle was surprisingly small, though not very pleasant to look at regardless – and some with daughters. Blaise Zabini had obviously inherited her flaming tresses from her father, as Mrs. Zabini had a head full of thick, curly dark hair, and Tracey Davis' mum had her daughter's same bird-like appearance – tall, with long, skinny legs, a beaky nose, and feathery brown hair.

                Two of the families were predictably clustered together: The Crosses and the Malfoys. They had just breezed through the barrier separating the Muggle side of King's Cross from the magical side, and the two families' respective matriarchs were engaged in small-talk whilst their children loaded their things onto the train.

                "Are you sitting with your lover-boy again?" Malfoy questioned Gwendolyn as he pushed his trunk in with the others.

                "He is not my 'lover-boy', and I don't know. I might. It's a more appealing prospect than watching you and Pansy dry-hump for seven hours."

                The blond boy only shrugged, leaning nonchalantly against the side of the train as Gwendolyn piled her own trunk on top of his. When she had finished, they made their way back over to their mothers to say their good-byes and collect Morgaine's and Adder's cages.

                "You'll send an owl when you arrive?" Mrs. Cross asked her daughter, a slightly anxious look about her face.

                "Yes ma'am."

                "And remember your father's birthday – he's already broken up enough that he can't be here to see you off."

                Gwendolyn pursed her lips wearily. "As though I'd forget."

                Her mother smiled and pulled her into a short hug, and out of the corner of her eye Gwendolyn took great amusement in watching Malfoy's face turn pink as he was made to kiss his own mother on either cheek before she would allow him to head for the train.

                Eventually, they both broke free of the maternal clutches and boarded the Hogwarts Express, proceeding straight toward the compartments near the back, poking their heads in here and there to check for students from their House. Malfoy found Pansy sitting with Blaise in the box just before the caboose and ducked inside, while Gwendolyn shot the former a scathing glare before disappearing into the compartment adjacent to theirs. Warrington, Montague, and Nott were already inside, playing a game of exploding snap and comparing lists of the Christmas presents they had received.

                "Hey Gwendolyn," Montague nodded an acknowledgement as she took the open seat next to Warrington and set Morgaine's carrier down on the floor at her feet. "Care to join the game?"

                "No thank you, I'd much rather watch," she said quietly, despite a severe lack of interest in the game all around. The train hadn't even begun to move yet, and already she was impatient for the journey to end. The sooner she returned to Hogwarts – and Professor Snape – the better. 

It had occurred to her over the remaining holidays after Christmas that, if her presumptions concerning the Potions master were true, it might have been he whose kiss had stolen her breath away barely a week earlier. The odds of it weren't in her favour, of course – the _Daily Prophet had reported seven groups of Death Eaters wreaking havoc on the London streets that night, and if each of them numbered the same as the faction she had encountered, there was but a one in forty-nine chance that it would have been him. Still, it was a chance, and she liked to entertain the idea that it had indeed been Severus Snape's mouth that pressed so fervently against hers._

                She glanced at the faces that surrounded her. Casca Warrington had a light dusting of soot covering the lower half of his face – obviously he hadn't been the victor in their last game. Rufus Montague was concentrating hard on his cards, his hazel eyes shifting upward every so often to regard his opponents with suspicious calculation before he played his hand. Tyler Nott had yet to so much as look at her, and it was obvious from the way he kept his gaze glued to his cards though it was nowhere near his turn that he was purposely avoiding speaking to her. It was of no consequence to Gwendolyn, of course. If he did indeed harbour an adolescent infatuation toward her, he would grow out of it soon enough. Boys were such fickle creatures.

                At last, their compartment gave a great lurch signalling the Hogwarts Express' departure from platform nine and three-quarters. As the train sped up, Gwendolyn's mood lightened a trifle, and for a long while she simply stared past Casca's head out the window. The scenery rushed past, though not fast enough for her tastes. She wished she could have returned to the castle by broomstick, the same as she'd arrived. She wanted to feel the wind make a whip of her hair, craved the sensation of total freedom that could only be found in the vastness of the sky. Of course, she preferred to fly at night – her fair skin burned easily, and the sunlight didn't agree with her eyes – but anything would have been better than simply _sitting there, no matter how opulent the cage._

                About an hour into the trip, the witch with the trolley of refreshments came 'round looking like something less than her usual cheerful self. It pleased Gwendolyn to see that the roses in the plump woman's cheeks had wilted some; a nicely subtle example of the darkness ebbing from London on out.

                Gwendolyn bought a Liquorice Wand and a bottle of butterbeer for the witch's troubles uplifting her spirits so.

                The remainder of the ride went by rather slowly, try as her male companions might to make it more interesting. After exploding snap came the Chocolate Frogs (as the sweets had only one good jump in them to begin with, the object of the game was to catch the frog in one's mouth before it lost the majority of its charm), and following that, a brief talk on the O.W.L.s, which Nott and Gwendolyn would be taking with the rest of the fifth-years in late April, and then griping about school marks in general.

                "I'm going to have to lock myself in Sinistra's classroom for a month if I'm going to pass Astronomy this year," Montague sighed as he licked his fingers of melted chocolate. 

                Warrington rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't if you'd only stay awake during her classes," he said. "If you put half as much effort into those as you did the detentions she's always giving you _because you fell asleep, you'd be her prize student."_

                "Are you kidding? Have you even _looked at Sinistra __once the last five years she's been here? I mean, sure, her lectures could put a rabid Hippogriff to sleep, but I'd dip my quill into her inkwell, if you catch my drift."_

                "Tsk, Rufus," Nott mumbled, glancing at the other boy out of the corner of his eye. "We've a lady in our midst."

                Gwendolyn arched an eyebrow at him – it was the first time he'd acknowledged her presence that day.

                "Who?" Rufus asked. "Casca? I know he's sort of femme-looking, but..."

                "Montague, you're an idiot."

                "Shove off, fairy." He punched Warrington good-naturedly in the shoulder, and the two of them chuckled. Nott remained as stone-faced as he'd been throughout the trip, periodically flicking his gaze over to Gwendolyn as though he were trying to decipher something in her that he hadn't seen before. Every so often, she'd catch him at it, but said nothing – who was she to puncture his illusion of stealth? She had more eminent things on her mind that needed paying attention to, such as Hogwarts' extensive history section of the library. She knew there had been trials following Lord Voldemort's ruin, trials concerning alleged Death Eaters and questionable members of the Ministry that weren't present in her History of Magic textbook. Hogwarts was an excellent school of magic – the best in all of Europe, she had read – and it was bound to have records of the events she was interested in learning about.

                She would look tonight, immediately after dinner. Malfoy would probably be too busy with Pansy to take much notice of her absence, and the others would probably milk the lazy holiday atmosphere until the last possible second – with the possible exception of the Ravenclaws, whom Gwendolyn doubted cared very much one way or another about her ventures, the library would be mostly empty. She would have privacy, quiet, and would sweat blood until she confirmed on her own what Nott and Malfoy still refused to tell her.

~*~

                Snape's brow knitted in concentration as he carefully measured out twelve drops of Glumbumble treacle to add to Lupin's Wolfsbane Potion. As in all magic, a person's body is the main instrument used, and no hands were steadier than Severus Snape's.

                "Potion-making hands," Professor Absinthe, the Potions mistress that had been employed in the days when Snape had attended Hogwarts rather than taught there, had described of his still, elegant fingers. "You were born for this, child."

                She hadn't been lying. Potions came as naturally to Snape as breathing fire came to a dragon. Both students and faculty alike were under the impression that he was determined to sink his claws into the Defence Against the Dark Arts position, but that could not have been further from the truth. He coveted the professors that had swum in and out of those doors not because he detested them for acquiring that which he so dearly sought, but because they had all proved to be the bad seeds out of a teaching staff that was envied the whole magical world 'round. 

Both Quirrel and 'Moody' had been purveyors of aid to the Dark Lord at a time when Snape had allied himself with Dumbledore's lightness. Lockhart had been a joke in sorely poor taste. Lupin was a danger to himself and those around him, and someone Snape just didn't bloody like. If he was the only decent judge of character amongst the whole of the Hogwarts faculty and chose to outwardly admit it when he found one of his colleagues untrustworthy or inept, and was merely patted on the head every time he voiced his opinions, so be it. If the others were too blind to see the shortcomings of those around them, they would continue to pay for their stupidity. Severus Snape did not cry wolf – why would he, when he was a wolf himself? His endeavours kept their focus skewed. "You're just bitter, Severus." "Don't be so childish, Severus." "I'm sure your day will come, Severus." Fools, the lot of them. They didn't realise that every year, Dumbledore offered him the position he was thought to yearn for in his sleep, and every year, Snape would turn him down. He was the Potions master, and while he continued to breathe, no one could take that title from him.

His hands did not quaver as he poured in a dash of rat's blood. The Wolfsbane Potion, though quickly made compared to something as simple yet time-consuming as Polyjuice Potion, still took quite awhile to prepare. Once he added the powdered monkshood, it would have to simmer for some twelve hours before he could add in the crushed Billywig stings and mandrake leaves – the final ingredients, the latter of which he would need to procure on another trip to Sprout's greenhouses early tomorrow morning.

He glanced at the small pendulum clock that occupied a corner of his desk – fourteen past six. The Hogwarts Express would just be pulling into Hogsmeade Station, which meant that the students would be returning to the castle just as dinner was being served at seven. Though the putrid scent of the potion had done little for his appetite, the students and faculty would expect to see him in the Great Hall. He had missed too many meals already – an imprudent practice for one attempting to maintain that nothing was out of the ordinary. He could let the potion rest in his office until morning.

His legs felt leaden as they carried him out of the room and toward his private chambers to wash up. As though his hair wasn't greasy enough due to his occupation, being cooped up in a windowless room day in and day out amidst the smoke and numerous fetid odours wafting from twenty or so cauldrons, Lupin's presence had ensured their inescapability, even while Snape was supposedly meant to be on holiday. The versipellis seemed set out to prove he could be a constant thorn in the Potions master's side. He wondered if the turnskin was aware of how many times he'd been tempted to add a dash of liquid silver along with the rat's blood into his monthly 'antidotes'...mostly likely, yes was the answer. Perhaps Snape would test Lupin's confidence in his trustworthiness sometime. Perhaps.

~*~

                The Hogwarts halls seemed strangely empty, Gwendolyn noticed as she stepped inside the Main Hall with the others, though the atmosphere certainly wasn't due to lack of students. It was as though a dark, sombre cloud had settled over the castle, giving it the air of a funeral despite the gallows humour that kept most smiling and tittering nervously. With so many of the students in the city over the holidays, the events of London were nearly just as prevalent here as they had been there. She caught sight of a Gryffindor girl in her year – Sally-Ann-something – bursting into tears as she was greeted by two of her friends who had remained at the school over Christmas break – apparently, her Muggle aunt had been one of those viciously killed by the Death Eaters. Gwendolyn wondered if she had been the woman in the blue dressing gown.

                She let the sea of bodies flowing into the Great Hall carry her with them, and took her seat next to Malfoy at the Slytherin table. The dangerous, Stoic look that graced her features at the sight of Pansy was not lost on the pug-faced girl, who clung to her boyfriend as though he would actually intervene were the 'vampire bitch' to try anything. Of course, Gwendolyn wouldn't – she was incensed with the girl, yes, but not anywhere near to the point of foolishness required for her to do anything of relevance with nearly the whole of the teaching staff sitting not ten yards away. Her eyes swept up to the High Table, and she felt a pleasant rush of adrenaline move through her body at the trigger of her most deep-seated whims, who, she noted, appeared even more Death-like than normal.

                His skin was as ghostly-pale as it had ever been, and his face was a little thinner, causing his cheekbones to cut sharply against his skin. His oil-black hair was damp as though he'd recently emerged from having a bath, and the hollows of his eyes were rimmed with red and grey, giving away a succession of sleepless nights that Gwendolyn would have been more than happy to occupy.

                _Beautiful, she thought to herself, and was so lost in her contemplations of him that she scarcely noticed McGonagall clinking her glass with her fork to call for silence, nor did she absorb a single word of the headmaster's solemn speech, though the words floated past her ears like background static from a radio as little bits of lyric filled her head._

                "To my faculty, and my students, my friends and my children, it is with a heavy heart that I welcome you back to these hallowed halls. I don't need to inform you of the great tragedy that befell the city of London on Christmas morning."

                _A hood to hold suffering...a scythe to cradle pain...kill me and then bring me back... just to do it all over again..._

                "I know we all mourn those who were targeted as victims, for we all lost something that fateful night..."

                _Robes to cloak the tortured souls...black boots to gag the screaming...hiss to me your secret nights...privy me your dreamings..._

                "...innocence. No longer can we view the world through the eyes of the naïve, for the darkness that tendrils on the edges of our existence has crept to the fore..."

                _Let me crucify you, dear one...to lap the blood from your cup...I'll stain your lips with my own tongue...lick your wrists to clean you up..._

                "It has a name, and I ask that you not cower when it is spoken. Do not give him even that small power over you."

                _Stab me if it suits your fancy...blend my flesh with silver blade...perform a dance of necromancy...dance with my corpse on my own grave..._

                "I have the utmost confidence that Hogwarts has always been and will remain one of the safest magical sanctuaries in the world, and as long as I am headmaster of this school, Lord Voldemort's hands will never sully these halls." 

Cheers and applause sounded throughout the Great Hall with varying levels of emotions, and it was with a dimmed light in his eyes that Dumbledore looked upon the relative silence of the Slytherin table, where most of the students were sitting with faces chiselled of cold stone. He glanced at their Head of House, but if he was expecting any difference in the wizard's expression, he would find only disappointment.

Severus let his liquid-black gaze slide over the four tables in front of him. The Gryffindors first, all wearing masks of bravery and resolve; the champions. The Hufflepuffs, where timidity reigned, a table full of worried little creatures; the prey. Then the Ravenclaws, full of calculation and options that required careful weighing and balancing; the scavengers. And finally his Slytherins, traceless of any terrible vexation, wrapped in the protective embrace of power; the predators. All of them pigeonholed, stereotyped, and categorised into an enclave merely because the others would not accept any good brought to the world by so ill-reputed a House. True products of their environment, spawned of a medieval mindset of prejudice and suspicion. Those quick to condemn them would claim that there had never been any children Sorted into Slytherin House – rather, zombies shrouded in a guise of false virtue and youth. Recycled souls borne of evil men and women the whole world 'round. Wolves in sheep's clothing. Screaming demons wearing angels' skins. Why bother saving them, when they were damned the day they were born?

And yet people questioned it all – they actually had the _gall to wonder why so many a Dark witch and wizard came out of Slytherin House, why so many snakes comprised Lord Voldemort's ranks. Snape could have told them in an instant: Acceptance. Living in a world where most wouldn't piss on them were they on fire – it was painfully obvious that the Light side didn't want them, and the Dark side wasn't nearly so picky. Most grew to enjoy the role they had been dealt, if they hadn't already the predisposition for it from being brought up in a home already tainted with the backwash of society. Young Mr. Malfoy came to mind._

Snape's eyes glimmered over to his most prized pupil, a halo of blonde hair topping an arrogance that was so characteristic of his father. Briefly, Snape wondered if Lucifer's children had inherited his immaculate white wings, as Lucius had passed on his angelic features to his heir. The Malfoys, kith and kin to the Devil himself, favoured above all for their beauty, and banished to hell for their brutality. Bad faith, indeed.

Severus wondered of the boy's involvement with the Parkinson girl, who fawned over him as though he were some brilliant jewel to which she had been entrusted. Draco was everything like Lucius, and Pansy was nothing like Narcissa. Perhaps, though, in time, she would come to realise her station as a Malfoy's wife, if things progressed that far. She would school herself into perfect public composure, and see their children as the apple of her eye. Lucius had commented good-naturedly more than once of the way Narcissa would go to pieces every September, when she would have to send her 'petit dragon' away until Christmas.

Ever-present next to Malfoy, the Cross girl was staring at him again, her large eyes glassy and unblinking, like those of a corpse. A shard of ice slid down his spine, and Severus stiffened to hold off a shiver. How strange that she would seem the deadest of them all. She wasn't the first Slytherin in her family, not by a long shot, but she was the first in nearly four hundred years. He was a stranger to the societal structure of wizarding America, but he had to wonder if Loki House did in fact face the same intolerance as Slytherin House to create such a living cadaver.

_You speak as though she's Frankenstein's monster, a voice echoed inside his skull, and he answered it, __Aren't__ we all?_

There was a sudden flash in front of his eyes, and for a split-second, the Cross girl was a shadow surrounded by an overlarge flower garden of inverted, sickly-bright petals before his vision returned to him with spots of burnout-violet rimmed with mordant green. He turned his head just as a grinning fourth-year boy with a camera – Colin Creevey, there was no mistaking him – made his way back toward the Gryffindor table after taking a snapshot of all the teachers at the High Table. The boy had been trying to start a school newspaper (the _Hogwarts Foghorn, he wanted to call it. What a load of rubbish); no doubt this was his way of encouraging the teachers to allow it. The motion was to be brought up at the next staff meeting. Snape had already been practicing his 'nay's._

"Severus?" McGonagall's voice rang in his ears, and he turned his scowl her way. She didn't seem particularly fazed by the look of animosity. Sixteen years of working alongside a person would allow even the rudest of looks to be met with indifference. "Are you well? You've barely eaten in days."

"My eating habits are my business," he snapped, and the older woman looked slightly taken aback.

"There's no need to get snippy."

"Have you ever considered, Minerva, that perhaps its your endless enquiries into the health of others that drives their appetites away?" He knew it was an unfounded remark, and unfairly malicious, but he had never been one to care about the latter, and certainly was in no frame of mind to give a damn about the former. McGonagall frowned at him as though he were mad. _Well, that's fitting enough, he mused to himself. __We're__ all mad here. The deputy headmistress didn't attempt to speak to him again, instead choosing to turn a Cheshire cat smile on Lupin, who looked even more bedraggled than usual with the nearness of the full moon._

Severus himself wondered if prolonged exposure to the versipellis could result in a mimic of demeanour. He felt restless and anxious, and couldn't for the life of him figure out the cause. It was becoming an unwelcome trend, these effects that lacked both rhyme and reason. His eyes returned to the Cross girl, who had abandoned her study of him in favour of a discussion with Malfoy. Still, every so often she would cast that corpse-like gaze up to his place, and it would linger there longer than would be considered polite. He found himself at a loss to describe the lifeless colour of her eyes. They didn't sparkle like emeralds, as Potter's did. No, there were no precious gems to be found there. Gangrenous was far too pale, jade far too pretty, and moss far too...alive.

And then it hit him: Envy. Sick, dark envy-green. Jealous green. Slytherin green.

He took a long drink of the wine that had filled his goblet upon the materialisation of the meal, and savoured its spicy taste as it slid over his tongue to spill into his empty stomach. She was like a doll, his Alice. A soul of sawdust enfolded in a leather body, her head stitched with human hair, her dead eyes made of glass. Some discarded plaything from sweeter days, now trapped in an attic teeming with spiders and ghouls. A dried rose pressed into a picture album, taken out only every decade or so and regarded with sorrowful sentimentality, and perhaps to prick her owner in the finger for having ignored her so, as this rose would never consent to having her thorns removed.

_Dolls and dead roses...perchance you truly have__ gone mad._

Perchance...perchance a great many things.

The students had begun to depart for their respective common rooms, in turn giving Snape acquiescence to leave himself. He rose and headed for the dungeons – if he slept now, the draught would have worn off by early morning; he would collect the remaining ingredients he needed then, before the sun rose and the halls filled with the hollow, blood-boiling laughter of children.

~*~

                _The Azkaban Trials, 1986-1988...end of a dark era (yeah, right)...most prisoners sentenced to life terms in the wizarding prison of Azkaban (no, really?)...consisted mainly of Death Eaters, servants of He-Who-Must-Not – oh, honestly, they won't even write__ his name in this one...Voldemort. Voldemort Voldemort Voldemort. Vol. De. Mort. Flight of Death. Or Law of Death. But the former is much more appealing-sounding...a few prisoners bargained with the Ministry of Magic in exchange for information concerning the identities and whereabouts of Death Eaters still-at-large – oh, this is completely useless!_

                Gwendolyn tossed the book aside and rubbed her temples. That was the dozenth volume she'd pored over that night, and it, like the other eleven, had told her only the vaguest hints of the goings-on some fourteen years ago.

                "Three sodding hours down the bloody drain..." she groused to herself, and eyed the remaining stack of thirty or so more historical texts still waiting patiently on the table in front of her – roughly a third of the books in the library on that particular period in time. She was just beginning to question whether she hadn't been a little _too ambitious in her quest for knowledge when a body wandered over to stand near where she was seated. Gwendolyn looked up to see Granger, the Mudblood Gryffindor incessantly at Potter's side, staring at her curiously. The Slytherin arched an eyebrow at the bushy-haired girl whose presence was doing nothing to appease her annoyance. "What?"_

                "Nothing," the other girl said in an off-hand sort of way. "I've just never seen you in here before, and suddenly you're neck-deep in..." she paused, her eyes roving over the titles of the stacked volumes, "...Azkaban trial texts."

                "Not that I give a damn, but - this troubles you?"

                "No, not really. It's just...strange, is all, that you would take such a sudden interest in something that has nothing to do with what we're studying in History of Magic right now." There was a suspicious undertone to the girl's voice that Gwendolyn didn't like, and she folded her arms in testament to that fact.

                "If you have a point, kindly get to it."

                "There's no need to get defensive," said Granger, her brow knitting in a disdainful frown.

                "There's also no need for you to be sticking your nose in other people's business, is there?"

                "No wonder Malfoy's taken a liking to you – you're just as pompous as he is."

                "Very true."

                The girl seemed somewhat puzzled but the aloofness of Gwendolyn's agreement – weren't Slytherins supposed to get mortally offended by anyone who dared to pay them an insult? Or maybe this Slytherin didn't see pompousness as anything but a positive trait...

                "Why? What makes you think you're better than anyone else?"

                Sighing, Gwendolyn leaned back in her chair and looked upon the other girl with an impassive face. "What do you expect to gain from my answer?"

                Granger shrugged. "Call it morbid curiosity."

                "I don't think you have the faintest idea of what that actually entails. Still, I suppose there's no harm in humouring you."

                "Oh, how very generous," the girl snapped, and was becoming more apparent to Gwendolyn by the second Malfoy's reasons for detesting her as he did.

                "I have money. A great deal of it, in fact. I come from a line of pure-blood witches and wizards that can be traced back to the construction of this school and beyond. I'm attractive, intelligent, talented, and harbour no qualms in using any and all of these qualities to my advantage. That _is what you wanted to hear, is it not?"_

                "You forgot 'full of yourself'."

                "Ah, yes. And you, a Mudblood at the top of her year amidst dozens of witches and wizards of purer blood than hers, would know nothing of that, would you? It sickens me to see one who believes herself to be so full of pious intention. That is what you Gryffindors are known for, yes? Honour, courage, nobility..." She shuddered in mock-pleasure, rubbing her arms with her hands. "Ooh, the gallantry of it all."

                Granger's mouth twisted into a snarl she probably would have been horrified to know was a rather decent impression of one of Slytherin House's trademark expressions. "You're absolutely repugnant. How can you stand to live with yourself?"

                "I don't."

                The bushy-haired girl looked as though she badly wanted to enquire further about that last cryptic comment, but they were interrupted by a leery-looking Madam Pince, an older woman with the figure of a malnourished bird and pinched features that always made her appear as though she had just been sucking raw lemons. She adjusted her half-moon spectacles on the tip of her nose and regarded both girls with eyes that were nearly squinted shut.

                "Is there a problem here, ladies?" she asked, eyeing Gwendolyn's impressive stack of books warily.

                "No ma'am," Granger mumbled. "No problem."

                "Then I suggest you keep your voices to a minimum. This is a library, not a discussion hall."

                The Gryffindor nodded and shot one last suspicious glare at Gwendolyn before spinning on her heel and stalking off. Pince circled the table once like a vulture, pursing her lips in such a way that her puckered mouth resembled a dog's bottom.

                "Quite the heavy workload you have here, Miss Cross."

                "Mm. Rather imposing, isn't it?"

                "Indeed. Might I ask what you need all of these books for? Certainly not a class assignment, lest I'd have fifty other students in here clamouring for the same materials."

                "It's a...personal project of mine. History is my second love. I must say, none of these are very informative – they outline the trials, but give no real information. Do you know of any books that do?"

                "The Azkaban Trials were ugly business," Pince informed her, and Gwendolyn found amusement in the thought that the ancient woman might actually be trying to intimidate her. "The more in-depth reports are located in the restricted section. You will need a legitimate signed note from a professor in order to access it."

                The Slytherin cast her eyes over to the roped-off portion of the library and thought for a moment. A note would be easy enough to procure – most of her teachers were amicable enough toward her, and Binns was doubtful to question her motives, impressed as he was with her marks in his class. She turned back to Pince, thanked her, and began gathering up the books on the table to put them away before she left.

                "Please," the librarian cut in, "allow me. Students so rarely catalogue them correctly."

                "If you insist."

                New information tucked away in her brain, Gwendolyn left the library and started for the dungeons, and was almost there when a silvery presence rose from the floor to hover in front of her.

                "Baron! Oh, how lovely it is to see you again!" she exclaimed, smiling widely for the first time in weeks. "How was your holiday? You won't believe it – the most _wonderful thing happened while I was in London—"_

                "Hush, child," the Bloody Baron cut her off, his voice firm, but gentle. "It's nearly time you were in bed."

                "Then can I see you tomorrow morning? Please? I simply _must tell you all about what happened!"_

A tiny, barely-visible smile curled at the corners of the spectre's mouth, and he nodded once. "Tomorrow morning."

"Fabulous – I can't wait – good-night, then."

"Pleasant dreams, Lady Cross," the Baron softly bade her as she hurried past him to be inside the Slytherin common room before lights-out. "Pleasant dreams."

~*~

                "It was wretchedly foul. The snow was all mottled black and brown with filth, and there were rats screaming in a nearby waste bin – fighting over food, I think – but oh, Baron...his mouth was divine, soft as anything. He tasted like poisoned apples, sweet and deadly, like the kiss of Death. I could have died with him for hours – wanted to, even, but I tore myself away. I hid behind the waste bin. Afterward, he looked so...confounded, as though he hadn't wanted me to stop, but then the others Apparated into the alleyway. I've already told you of the woman he next focused on." Gwendolyn took a sip of her tea, and the Bloody Baron watched her with a most curious (albeit deeply amused) expression on his translucent face.

                "It does sound as though you had a most interesting holiday," he said quietly, the same smirked that was present the previous night once again returning to his lips.

                "To say the least. It was marvellous. And I haven't even told you about my Christmas presents yet. But really, I've been doing nothing but speak of myself – I'd hate to think I've begun to bore you."

                "Not at all, Lady Cross," he reassured her. "My murderous holidays are long over, and it's been very many years indeed since someone last regaled me with their own."

                "Oh? Who was the last?" asked Gwendolyn, inquisitive about everything having to do with the Slytherin House ghost.

                "A boy, a Slytherin like yourself, by the name of Tom Riddle."

                "Tom Riddle...that sounds so familiar, and yet I can't quite place it...when did he go to school here?"

                "It was the 1940s, I do believe – it can be difficult to keep track. The years slide through my fingers as easily as any other object."

                "What did he do?"

                The Baron paused, taking his time in selecting the proper words. "He discovered something of great importance at this school and employed its use in a most...ingenious way, amongst other things. That is all I can tell you."

                Gwendolyn frowned, puzzled by the spectre's unforthcoming. "That's all? Are you quite sure?"

                "You wouldn't enjoy it much if I were to tell another of all the secrets you've entrusted me with, would you?"

                "...no, no I suppose not." She calmed somewhat after that, her eyes settling on a random point on the table in front of her rather sulkily. The Baron knew he indulged her fancies more than he should. He'd spoiled this one, and would admit – if by the exceedingly slender chance someone were to ask him – that she had become his favourite. Her infatuation with Death – more than that, her _respect for him and the job he performed – had endeared her to the Baron unlike any who had passed through the Hogwarts halls before her. To coin a popular phrase among the adolescents he saw these days, she 'got it'. Thus it was to his personal chagrin that he didn't want to be the cause of her abrupt sullenness, and it was thus he set about rectifying that._

                "You mentioned a rekindling with your joy of dancing," he said, brushing frozen fingertips across the back of her hand. "I would be honoured if you would dance with me now."

                She blinked prettily up at him through dark lashes, the morose shadows in her eyes already beginning to melt away. "Truly, you would?"

                "My dear Lady, I never lie."

                Smiling, she rose from her seat, discarded her dressing gown, and came around to the front of the table. Gently she placed one hand in his, and the other on his chilling shoulder, the prolonged contact sending a stream of ice through her veins that she found to be oddly pleasurable. "You lead?" she asked him, and the Baron nodded, "Of course."

                Slowly, they began the steps of a waltz, the phantom's feet mimicking the movements of the dance flawlessly as he floated several inches above the floor. Gwendolyn matched him step-for-step, and as his confidence in her abilities grew, the waltz became more daring, a flurry of twirls and top-like spins that were nearly enough to make even her ballet-trained eyes dizzy. They danced their way between the House tables scarcely touching at all, first Slytherin and Ravenclaw, then Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, and so on, 'round and 'round the Great Hall until Gwendolyn could no longer hold in the buoyant laughter that had caught in the back of her throat, and the Baron was enraptured with the sound of it.

~*~

                Severus walked with his usual resolute stride across the Hogwarts grounds, freshly-plucked ingredients from Sprout's greenhouses in their leather pouch. He entered the castle through a rarely-used door in the northeast corner, and made his way past the despicable staircase that led up to Trelawney's Divination Tower and across the Main Hall. He had nearly reached the dungeons when a woman's voice caught his ear, one he didn't recognise as belonging to any of the female professors. He stopped mid-stride and turned, his eyes narrowed and ears alert, scanning the many shadows and crevices surrounding him for the slightest sign of a student out of bed.

                There – he heard it again, and jerked his head to the right. Two voices now, the other one male with an otherworldly hiss in its undertones, both coming from the direction Snape had just been.

                Then he noticed it – one of the doors to the Great Hall slightly ajar. With silent steps easily managed by his slim frame, he made his way over and peered into the massive dining hall through the inch-wide crack between the doors. Later he would wish he hadn't.

                At the High Table – more specifically, at _his seat at the High Table – was the Cross girl, and across from her, the Bloody Baron. She appeared to have a cup of something-or-other sitting in front of her, and while Severus couldn't make out what they were saying, hushed as their voices were, they seemed to be conversing quite pleasantly, as though this wasn't the first early-morning meeting they had taken part in together._

                His first instinct was to make his presence known – a student out of bed was a student out of bed, regardless of the spectral company she kept – and the Cross girl had broken that particular rule on more than one occasion. But something held him back. He wanted to witness this strange exchange, for never before had he seen the Baron speak so freely and agreeably to anyone, let alone a sixteen-year-old girl who had been at Hogwarts barely a month and a half.

                He watched as the ghost said something that obviously disappointed her, for she lowered her gaze, and a petulant pout formed on her lips. A few moments passed, and the Baron had amended his mistake, for the girl looked up at him adoringly before standing and shrugging out of her dressing gown, revealing the black chemise Severus had glimpsed when he had found her pacing outside his office one morning not long after she had arrived. She stepped up to the ghost, and they began to do the oddest thing.

                They were dancing. Waltzing and smiling as though they were the only two beings in the world – certainly the only two conscious ones. Severus observed the elegant motions, mesmerised by the hauntingly apt beauty of his dead doll and her phantom partner as they glided around the considerable room, between the House tables and so near to the doors that he held his breath for fear they'd discover him.

                And then he say it, plain and glaring as the light of the waxing, nigh-full moon. Nothing more than a simple gesture, but it was enough to instil in him the greatest of dreads. _No, he thought, __no, that can't be right. A trick of the light, yes, a trick of the light was all..._

                But then he saw it again, the all-too-familiar movement, the graceful extension of her slender, white arm, and the little flick of the wrist at the end, and he could not deny its existence twice, not when he had seen it so clearly the second time. It fit too perfectly, too perfectly to have been a mistake.

                Other movements now, too, each of them flawless in their re-enactment, each of them as unblemished as he had seen before in...

                There, the arch of her back – and there! The way she craned her neck, and then the laughter...that same wicked, bubbling giggle he had heard countless times before, though never in the waking world. Suddenly the phantasm cause of his exhaustions, of his vexations, the plague that had been infecting his mind night after sleepless night had a face.

                The woman he danced with nightly in his dreams was none other than Gwendolyn Cross.


	10. Sanguinaire

At last I have made chapter ten my bitch. As always, very dear thank-yous to all you lovelies who have reviewed. I'm so happy to know you're all enjoying this, and that you think as highly of it as you do. I do hope I ended this chapter all right; Faith reckons it's fine, so I blame her if its unsatisfactory. ;) Also, a note to Elspeth: I've only read about half of Carpe Jugulum by Pratchett, so I didn't come across any Death scenes, no, but now I'm all keen to check them out. And yes, Gwendolyn thinks quite a lot of Poe, as does Snape, apparently, from the latter bit of this chapter. (Small disclaimer – I own no Poe things used here.) So. Onward we go...

**Part 10 – Sanguinaire**

                The realisation of it was nearly tangible, and Severus staggered back from the doors as though he'd been struck. His second instinct was one that he followed without hesitation – to get the hell away from the scene that had caused him such a deplorable recognition. He hastened down to his dungeons as a scream of indignation filled his throat, which he swallowed back in favour of the enveloping numbness of shellshock. Every illicit notion that had entered his mind over the past few weeks came crashing into him, flooding his senses with the suspicions of old and the knowledge of the new. He didn't want to believe it, but the logical workings of his mind would not allow for the foolishness of denial. He had seen it with his own eyes, proof laid out in front of him as though irony were a corporeal thing that could be touched and scrutinised.

                Why? Why _her of all people? Why the hell did it have to be __her?_

                She was sixteen. She was his student, for fuck's sake. She was _sixteen._

                _Sickly sixteen, with envy-green eyes and lust-red lips..._

                No. He would not entertain such reprehensible thoughts, would not allow himself to be drawn any deeper into this sordid web than he already had been. It had exhausted him, yes, but it hadn't – he wasn't....

                _Exhausted, yes, exhausted and bewitched and...beguiled..._

                Not beguiled. _Not beguiled._

                He stormed into his office and slammed the door behind him with such force that his Slytherins asleep in their dormitories were likely to have been awakened by it, and for once, he didn't give the smallest shit whether or not his cherished snakes received their beauty rest.

                _A great beauty.__ A dark beauty. Envy-green eyes, lust-red lips, pride-pale skin and a greedy tongue – oh gods, somebody stop me..._

                He sagged down into his chair, running his hands along his face to push back his hair. If before he could not escape her body, now he couldn't seem to chase her face from his mind, all doe-eyes and deep pout of faux-virtue; his dead doll. His perverted Alice, the corpse of a once-brilliant bloom.

                _Wicked giggles and skin-on-skin grazes like bullets and the rustle of black material when she moves and the tart apple tang of her mouth and can't you remember the crushed velvet feel__ of her body?_

                No. No – dreams, all of it dreams. Nothing was real. Nothing had happened yet – no, no 'yet'. Nothing had happened. Nothing would ever come of this twisted infatuation. He was above that, above such a depravity to the character of his self-control. He would _not yield._

                In the corner, the Wolfsbane Potion bubbled loudly, as if to remind Severus of its needing to be tended to. The leather pouch in his hand became a blessed distraction as he rose, his well-practiced hands already itching to perform what they did best above all others, to coax the concoction into a gentle climax of final ingredients before diminishing the flame beneath it to give way to the afterglow of softly snaking steam.

~*~

                The dormitory was still black and silent – with the exception of Tracey's quiet snores – when Gwendolyn returned from her impromptu gala with the Bloody Baron. She moved about the room by light from the tip of her wand, which she had propped up against her trunk as she dressed. She was halfway through lacing her left boot when there came a rustle from the bed to the right of her own, followed by a yawned "_Lumos." Gwendolyn smiled – Pansy was awake._

                She finished tying on the boot, picked up her wand and whispered nigh-inaudibly, "_Nox." Its light extinguished, and for a few moments she was blind, until the curtains shrouding Pansy's bed parted, revealing the pug-faced girl's own wandlight. She stepped back a little, out of range of the dim illumination, and waited until the other girl had stretched and was on her way to the washroom before acting._

                "_Expelliarmus!" she hissed, and Pansy jumped visibly as her wand was wrenched out of her hand and flew across the room to land with a clatter near Constance's bed. "__Lumos."_

                "What the fuck are you playing at, Cross?" Pansy demanded, her upper lip curled back in a disdainful snarl, though her eyes were wide and alarmed.

                Gwendolyn advanced upon her so quickly that the pug-faced girl was backed against the wall before she could think to stand her ground in defiance.

                "You know, Pansy, I really didn't _appreciate that little going-away present you left me with. In fact, it kind of upset me." Gwendolyn frowned at her, schooling her expression into one of melodramatic hurt._

                "Well...g-good. It was meant to," Pansy stammered, slowly growing bolder. She kept flickering her mean brown eyes past the other Slytherin at her still-lit wand on the floor, and they betrayed any bravado she was attempting to build. Predictably, she tried to make a dive for it – Gwendolyn put an end to that quickly. Exceptionally skinny as she was, Gwendolyn was a lot stronger than she looked. She grabbed the other girl by the wrist and used her own momentum to spin her around in an almost dance-like move, twisting her arm behind her back and slamming her up against the wall again. Pansy hit with a sharp grunt of pain, and Gwendolyn used her temporary disorientation to take hold of her other wrist, and pulled that arm back as well. The girl had rather small wrists, and Gwendolyn rather long fingers; she was able to pin both wrists with one hand, and used her other to point her wand at her still-open trunk.

                "_Accio dagger," she murmured, and Pansy started struggling as the knife reach Gwendolyn's hand._

                "What the fuck?!" the pug-faced girl exclaimed, her voice cracking slightly as she tried to worm her way out of the taller girl's grasp. "Let me go, you freak! _Let go of me!" Gwendolyn's response was to push the girl's hands up closer to her neck, and Pansy cried out as her elbows nearly snapped. By now, the other occupants of the dorm were beginning to wake, and peered out of their bed curtains to watch the unfolding scene through sleepy, half-lidded eyes. Gwendolyn was inwardly pleased that none of them seemed to be making a move to stop her – either from self-preservation instincts or apathy toward Pansy's well-being, she wasn't sure, nor did she much care._

                She tucked her wand into the pocket of her robes, its lit tip still visible, and brought the dagger 'round Pansy's front to rest lightly on the girl's throat. Pansy froze, and Gwendolyn could feel her heartbeat speed up through her wrists.

                "It _pained me, Pansy. I mean, it really __wounded me to know how little you value our friendship. I come here, we get along so well, and one day it's just __snap—" She paused, pressing the cold sharp edge of the knife more firmly into the girl's skin – just enough for the pressure to be exceedingly uncomfortable, but not enough to draw blood. "—And you cut me away. Do you have any idea what that feels like? Do you know how much it __hurts to know that your best friend can't stand you?" Out of the corner of her eye, Gwendolyn could have sworn she saw Blaise smirk._

                "You're fucking crazy!" Pansy snarled, trying to mask the thick tears of panic in her voice.

                "Then perhaps you should have thought of that _before you decided to play your little games. Rule number one, sweet Pansy: __Never fuck__ with crazy people. It's dangerous, and it's stupid – a fact the position you're currently in attests to. I'll warn you only once – I don't want you ever, __ever touching my things again. The next time you do, I will drag this blade across your throat so quickly and so cleanly you won't even be able to gag out a scream. I will string you up like a side of veal if you so much as breathe on or near my personal belongings. Do I make myself clear?"_

                "...yes," she choked out.

                "I'm sorry, I didn't quite hear you."

                "Fucking _yes!"_

                "Good. Thank you." With that, Gwendolyn withdrew the dagger slowly from Pansy's neck, took a step back, and released her hold on the girl's wrists. Pansy kept her back to the room for a few moments, composing herself and cradling one wrist that Gwendolyn's long nails had dug especially deeply into. There was a loud sniff, and she turned around, her face blotchy red from humiliation, and her eyes pink and glittering with tears. She studied the faces around her – one relatively unconcerned, two full of shock and apprehension, one smirking and spiteful – before stalking out of the room and slamming the door shut behind her.

                The others said nothing, and Pansy wasn't seen again until History of Magic later on that morning.

~*~

                "You held a knife to her throat?" Malfoy asked her as he sat down to breakfast, full of incredulity. Gwendolyn arched an eyebrow at him – she had mentioned nothing of the incident with Pansy to anyone, but word spread faster at Hogwarts than a wildfire during a drought. No doubt there would be nary a soul in the castle who didn't know of it by lunchtime. "Nott told me," he explained as though he'd been reading her mind. "He heard about it from Blaise. Is it true?"

                "It is."

                "How come you never told me she cursed your trunk?"

                Gwendolyn shrugged. "There was no reason for you to know about it. She pissed me off, and I dealt with her. End of story."

                "Somehow I doubt that. Pansy's not one to just let things drop. I know you can handle yourself, but it might be prudent to watch your back around her."

                "I'm sure my back will be fine. Yours, on the other hand..."

                "What are you talking about? It's not _me she's angry with."_

                "And how long do you think that's going to last with you not immediately snubbing the girl who held a knife to her throat? She's smitten with you, yes, but she's not blind. It's not going to sit well with her that you're not leaping at the chance to avenge her."

                Malfoy frowned – obviously, this hadn't occurred to him before. "Huh," he said, and took a bite of marmalade-drenched toast. "I suppose I'll deal with that problem when it presents itself."

                Gwendolyn thought of suggesting that he end his and Pansy's relationship entirely – after all, it hardly seemed worth all the effort of fighting for it if Malfoy wasn't the least bit offended by someone threatening his girlfriend's life – but she didn't. Those decisions were his and his alone to make.

                A flourish of black robes caught up in a breeze all their own swept behind where they sat, and Gwendolyn knew who it was even before she followed Malfoy's gaze back and up. Professor Snape glanced briefly between the two of them before his eyes settled on the female of the species, though they didn't meet her own.

                "Miss Cross," he said softly, the undertones of his voice wary and irate, "a word."

                Down the table a ways, a couple of first-years chorused a singsong "Oooh, some-one's in trou-ble," until Snape flashed them a warning glare. Gwendolyn rose and followed the Potions master out of the Great Hall and down into the dungeons, entertaining herself as they walked by looking for patterns in the theatrical billows of his robes.

                "Sit down," he ordered her once they were inside his office, and she complied. He sank down into his own chair and rested his hands on top of his desk, his fingers splayed – a gesture, Gwendolyn had learned, that meant he was most displeased with the matter he was attending to.

                Severus regarded the girl sitting across from him silently for a long while. Needless to say, he hadn't been thrilled when the Parkinson girl had rapped on his door earlier that morning shouting to high heaven of how she had been unfairly accosted by the other Slytherin, and it was not simply due to the gravity of the accusation.

                It wasn't just the dreams, nor the shudder he'd had to suppress when Parkinson displayed for him the still-seeping nail marks on her wrists that he had abstractedly recalled marring his own back. The thing that perplexed him most was the Cross girl herself – whether or not she was actually aware of the effect she had on him. If she knew, then chances were she was using some sort of magic to trigger his illicit ruminations; he could put a stop to that, once he figured out how she was doing it, and escape the situation more or less unscathed. But if she didn't, if she truly had no idea of the thoughts that frenzied his mind and stirred his body...it was not the option he preferred.

                He couldn't very well confront her outright about it, because the chances of it being the latter were far too high. It was too great a risk. She would be disgusted by the allegation, tell her parents, who would inform Dumbledore of what a lecherous monster he allowed to teach at his school, an act that would likely cost him his job, a tribute to the headmaster's cause or not. Though if things continued on like this, Severus couldn't be completely certain, despite what he told himself, that he wouldn't end up in much the same position. Gwendolyn Cross had already breached the substantial self-control he possessed, and being made to teach her, to see her day after day with his desire thrown back in his face...he was a strongly guarded man, but a man nonetheless, and he could never say with absolutely conviction that sooner or later he would not take matters into his own hands. Gods help him if that ever happened....

                "Miss Parkinson came to see me early this morning. Do you know why?" he asked, discreetly gauging the girl's predilection toward lying.

                "Yes," she said, and there was no lack of confidence in her answer. Severus' eyes narrowed.

                "Then you'll understand when I ask that you explain yourself."

                "The day I left for the winter holidays – right before I left, actually – I found Pansy bent over my trunk, mumbling something I could not understand. When I questioned her about it, she told me that she had just been petting Millicent Bulstrode's cat, who had wandered into our dormitory. I didn't trust her, of course, but I didn't bother to check my trunk as I was already running late and didn't want to miss the carriages. When I arrived home and opened my trunk, I found that the inside of it completely coated with slime. I had to replace all of my schoolbooks. Naturally, when I returned to school, I felt it necessary to inform her of my discontentment with what she had done."

                "And you didn't think it a little...severe...to hold a knife to her throat?" He didn't wait for her to respond before questioning her again. "Why didn't you inform _me of what she had done so I could deal with the situation accordingly? Perhaps you've led a sheltered life, Miss Cross, but surely you must be aware that threatening another student's life with a weapon, be it wand, dagger or other, is grounds for expulsion from any school, magical or Muggle."_

                "Are you going to expel me, sir?"

                _Do it, a voice in his head hissed. __Do it and be rid of her. You have more than enough of a good reason. Offer to pack her bags, give her fare for the Knight Bus, just rid yourself of her damnable presence._

                "...no, I am not."

                _You're__ digging your own grave, Severus. Don't be absurd. Put an end to this foolishness, these gluttonous thoughts. Remove this perverted temptation before it gains the upper hand._

                "You're to serve two weeks' worth of detention. Every afternoon following your last class until the Monday after next, you will locate Mr. Filch. He will hand you off to whomever is seeing over detention hall that night."

                _You stupid bastard._

                The girl nodded once. "Thank you, sir."

                _"Thank you, sir," the voice snapped mockingly. __Could she be any more obvious with her counterfeit civility? She's ridiculing you, you realise. She knows what you think of her, what you dream of doing to her, and she's laughing at you because of it, the insipid brat. May I remind you of her youth – I realise it's been years since your last Arithmancy lesson, but surely you can calculate that you are old enough to be this girl's father._

                "I'm being more than generous, Miss Cross. Another incident, and I will be forced to play a very different role. My favour toward Slytherin students can only extend so far."

                _What a repulsively ironic thing to say._

                "I understand," she murmured.

                "You're dismissed."

                She nodded once more and stood, and made no haste in leaving the room.

                _Fucking little tease._

                When she had gone, Severus lowered his eyes to his desk. His hands were tense, white at the knuckles as they tried in vain to grip the flat surface. He hooked his thumbs together and flexed spindly fingers as though creating a pale, disfigured spider, taut and impatient to pounce on a hapless victim, to weave a cocoon around a dead doll's throat and asphyxiate her existence from his own life, though he knew very well it was not his wish to exonerate the little Alice from his reality – he had turned his back on that chance already. What he wanted, to feed from her, he would not do. And so she would remain a skeleton in his web, and watch longingly through those envy-green eyes every kill that he made, as he would deny her the grace of her own death.

~*~

                In History of Magic, Pansy could not mask her surprise that Gwendolyn was still amongst those who attended school. There was a thin bruise in the centre of her jugular from where the knife had been pressed most firmly, and her hand flew up to cover it at the sight of the girl who'd inflicted the faint wound. Tracey and Constance kept their eyes glued to Gwendolyn as she took her seat next to Malfoy and wasted no time in hissing things between themselves that were most likely malevolent. Blaise glanced up from doodling a caricature of Binns on a bit of scrap parchment, but didn't appear to care much one way or another about Gwendolyn's presence.

                "What did he say to you?" Malfoy enquired as soon as she sat down. Pansy shot him a hurtful look, as he seemed more interested in the assaulter than the assaulted, but he either didn't notice it or ignored it, and she could only stare dejectedly down at her textbook.

                "I've got detention for two weeks, and I'm not to slice any throats. Other than that, nothing much."

                "Two weeks? Damn it. You're going to miss the first Quidditch match of the year – Slytherin versus Gryffindor. They beat us the last time we played them, but it was such bollocks. They only won because one of the Weasley twins – I don't know which one, but they're both Beaters – one of them knocked our Keeper unconscious. They managed to score a goal in the time it took his replacement to get his ass in the air; that's what did it."

                Gwendolyn sighed – she really _had wanted to watch that particular match. "Well, I'll be with you in spirit, if nothing else. I'll see if I can't be doing something that will allow me to keep an eye on the pitch."_

                Malfoy nodded just as the bell rang, and Professor Binns made his daily march through the blackboard. He took roll, and as he started writing out that day's outline, Gwendolyn found her mind slipping elsewhere as she copied down her notes, back to Professor Snape's office and the way he had simply _looked at her for endless minutes before speaking. The intensity of his gaze had thrown her, though she hadn't outwardly shown it, and she had been leisurely in her leaving of the room, knowing that those black eyes were still focused on her and wanting them watching for as long as possible. That he was watching her at all gave her cause to wonder of his thoughts as he did so – were they indecent? Lewd? Criminally filthy? Oh, she hoped so. Wished it, even, that that ebony burn she felt boring between her shoulder blades meant something much more than remote calculation._

                Unconsciously she balled her left hand into a tight fist, her nails nearly puncturing the soft pads of her palm. How she did love that burn, that searing pain he could mete out of her with his eyes alone. His touch would be excruciating, as agonising and forbidden as the Cruciatus Curse itself, and she craved it like water craves earth, wanted to lap at his scorching skin as the waves on the beach long to taste the shore, wanted to drown him until seawater became his second breath and he made his home in her depths. _He could spend his free time burning baby fish, she mused, and smiled serenely to herself. __I would catch him in my current, and we would dance in a whirlpool by moonlight, twisting and writhing until we exhausted ourselves and surrendered to the blistering day._

                She finished her notes in an ostentatious flourish of old-fashioned loops and curls, and signed them at the bottom as though they were a letter.

                "Who can tell me," Binns began, drawing Gwendolyn out of her reverie, "who was the first vampire to sign the edict banning the consumption of human blood unless willingly offered by the donor?"

                The majority of the Ravenclaws and a handful of Slytherins raised their hands.

                "Mr. Jamison."

                "Jean-Pierre the Pacified," Christopher Jamison answered, a tinge of intellectual pride in his voice.

                "More like Jean-Pierre the Pussified," Gwendolyn muttered under her breath, causing Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle to snort with laughter. Binns wasn't quite as impressed, ever irritated by the fact that one of his best students was also one to poke fun at his class.

                "Miss Cross," he said smoothly, and Gwendolyn's eyebrows raised, "you have something amusing to add?"

                "Oh, I highly doubt you'd enjoy it. It's not to your tastes, I don't think."

                "Then kindly keep your comments to yourself."

                "Yes sir."

                The rest of the lesson continued on without further incident, and when the break bell rang, Gwendolyn remained in her seat until all of her classmates had gone. So unused to students staying in his room any longer than absolutely necessary, Binns didn't even notice her presence, and was halfway back through the blackboard when she caught him, resting a hand on his icy, insubstantial arm.

                "Oh, Miss Cross. Terribly sorry – didn't see you there. What can I do for you? Surely you don't require assistance with today's assignment?"

                "Not today's, no – it's...I assigned it to myself, really. I'm researching the Azkaban Trials out of a personal interest. The only trouble is, all the books that give detailed reports are in the restricted section of the library. I was wondering if you could write me a note granting me permission to see them? Please?"

                Binns frowned at her, his bushy grey eyebrows furrowing and his great moustache twitching as he considered the request. "Oh, Gwendolyn, I don't know...ghastly things, the trials were. The atrocities confessed, families torn apart..."

                "I can handle it," she persisted. _I can more than handle it, she wanted to add, but kept her mouth shut. __I might even be inspired..._

                "Well...all right," he finally gave in, and bent over his desk to scribble a short note to Pince.

                "Thank you, sir," she smiled as he handed over the piece of parchment. She folded it up carefully and tucked it into the pocket of her robes. "Thank you very much."

                "You're welcome." Binns nodded benevolently, and Gwendolyn slung her rucksack over her shoulder and left, heading immediately for the library, as she possibly wouldn't be able to make it anytime after her classes over the next two weeks, depending on how long her detentions were.

                Pince had been sceptical of the note's authenticity for a couple of minutes before she allowed Gwendolyn into the roped-off section of the library, and it had taken the Slytherin nearly fifteen minutes to finally locate the proper sort of book and check it out. Glancing up at the wall clock above the librarian's desk, she swore softly – 10:21 a.m.; she was already late for Arithmancy. Professor Vector would be less than pleased.

                Book tucked safely away, she took off at a run for her next class. It was on the fourth floor, just past the suit of plate armour that had a penchant for sticking out its steel leg to trip unsuspecting passers-by. She was halfway there when the staircase beneath her feet shifted, taking her away from where she needed to go and toward some wing of the school she had never explored before.

                "Damn you, you abominable...thing!" she cursed it, stomping her foot down as the staircase swung around and came to a gently scraping halt. There was no way to tell when it would move again – Hogwarts itself was a completely random place with no set schedules beyond those of its staff and students. A temperamental place, too. Gwendolyn probably hadn't helped her case much by insulting it.

                She was about to simply sit and wait for the blasted staircase to move again, as she'd no idea how to find her way around the particular wing it was pointed at, let alone knew how to get to her classroom from there – wandering half-blind around London had been one thing, but there were no rampant acts of torture to be found in any part of the Hogwarts halls (that she was aware of, at least) and she wasn't about to go and get herself lost for no good reason – when a familiar yowl caught her ear. She turned to see Mrs. Norris staring at her on the third floor landing with a nasty you-are-_so-busted expression on her oddly lumpy face, and knew that Filch wouldn't be far behind._

                "Oh, sod _that," she muttered, starting up the staircase and into the mystery wing. She already had two weeks of detention ahead of her, and there was no way in hell she was going to be seen by Filch and given another two for wandering the school during class time without a pass from a teacher._

                "What do you see, my sweet? Have we a rogue student in our midst?" Filch's croaking voice echoed as Gwendolyn rounded the first corner. She heard the thuds of his heavy-booted feet slowly but surely heading in her direction, and tried the first door that she came to – which was, of course, locked.

                Pulling out her wand, she quickly pointed it at the knob and hissed "_Alohomora!" The lock clicked back, and she hurried inside, shutting and re-locking the door quietly as possible behind her. Pressing her back against the wall, she listened as the caretaker approached, then stopped in front of the room Gwendolyn was hidden in._

                "In here, my precious?" Filch gruffly asked the red-eyed feline, who released another yowl in response. There was a jingle of keys – _Why would Filch need keys? Gwendolyn wondered – and the door gradually creaked open, concealing the Slytherin from view. The custodian stood in the threshold so long Gwendolyn's lungs ached from holding her breath, and it was by a sheer stroke of luck that the cat didn't actually sniff her out – perhaps Mrs. Norris was an acquaintance of Morgaine's, and was doing her a favour. Eventually, the door closed once more, and Filch wandered off, muttering something about dastardly owls always flapping about the castle and making mess. Gwendolyn exhaled, and surveyed her surroundings for the first time._

                She appeared to be in a storage room of some sort, a veritable melting pot of all the classes Hogwarts had to offer. The shuttered windows cast streaks of sunlight across the mismatched contents – a few broken crystal balls from Divination classes gone awry, hordes of dusty old cushions, some of them spiky, others half-upholstered in plaid and half in polka-dots (obviously failed transfiguration attempts), chairs and desks with broken legs, and even a few ancient-looking cauldrons all warped and melted, some with holes in their bottoms (Longbottom's entire Potions career came to mind).

                But Gwendolyn was most captivated by an odd-looking box-like contraption that had to be of Muggle origin, for she'd never seen anything like it in her life. It was roughly eight or so inches in height, at least a foot in width, and attached to its side was what looked to be a ribbon wheel, though it wasn't ribbon that wrapped around it at all – rather, upon closer inspection, it was film from a camera. Holding the pictures up to the murky, dust-clouded light, she saw that they were all nearly identical, as though each had been taken just a fraction of a second after the one before it.

                "Curiouser and curiouser..." she mumbled to herself, replacing the film neatly back on its roll. Lying on the floor, connected to the device, was a slim black cord, at the end of which was a large hunk of rubbery something-or-other and two metal prongs, as though it were meant be attached to something else – to _plug into something else. "Of course..." But there were no outlets for such a mechanism at Hogwarts – electricity and magic mixed horribly, she knew that much, so what was this strange machine doing at the castle if it wouldn't work? "Perhaps that's why it's in here." Still, curiosity got the better of her, and while she didn't expect anything much to happen, she flicked the switch on top of the black box from 'off' to 'on'._

                Instantly, the thing started up, clicking madly and flashing blinding light in her face. Gwendolyn jumped back, startled at first, and then followed the light to where it was projected onto the stone wall.

                Like any other ordinary picture, this one moved, but unlike any ordinary picture, it seemed to be telling a story. The room was filled with a rich, somewhat heart-rending symphony. There were no voices set against it, but every so often the jerkily-moving sepia-shaded people would disappear, and words would be put in their place. _It must be what they're meant to be saying, Gwendolyn realised, utterly besotted with this weird and wonderful thing, even more so when she saw the figure that next appeared on the screen._

                He was beautiful, in much the same way that she found Professor Snape beautiful, if far more exaggerated; darkly dressed, with a more inhuman look about him. His ears were large and pointed, his nose hooked and strong, his face elongated and thin. His eyes were rimmed with charcoal-grey, his eyebrows were thick, and formed a wavy V-shape low on his forehead, and underneath a comically boxy hat he seemed to be completely bald. His words flashed on the screen: "You are late young man," and Gwendolyn giggled at the familiarity in the tone of voice she imagined him to have. What _was this intriguing piece of art?_

                She looked around her for anything that might have given away a clue to the answer she sought, and did not have to look long before she came across a stack of round canisters, each of them just the right size to hold a wheel like the one spinning speedily 'round the machine. The top one was empty, and labelled on its front was the word 'Nosferatu'.

                "Nosferatu..." Gwendolyn repeated, allowing the name to roll leisurely off her tongue. "Magnificent. Who would ever have guessed that mere Muggles could create something as exquisite as yourself?" The canister, unsurprisingly, didn't answer her, and she replaced it back on top of the others. Returning her gaze to the pictures on the wall, she drank them in for a few moments longer before pressing the contraption's switch to 'off'. Filch had left, yes, but she couldn't be certain that he would stay gone, and it was safer without the sweet, sad music that accompanied the film. She would find a way to tamper with the volume later, as there was no doubt in her mind that she would be returning to this especially marvellous room.

                She left the room, and when she stepped on the staircase it had apparently forgiven her, for it shifted back to its appropriate place almost immediately. Casting a last mournful look in the direction from which she had just come, she started once more for the Arithmancy classroom. She had missed nearly half the lesson, but after finding that particular diamond in the rough, she wasn't at all wary of whatever scorn Vector might toss at her because of her tardiness. A room such as that was well worth one extra detention.

~*~

                Lunch hour, and again he was not to be found in the Great Hall. He didn't want to see her, didn't want those corpse-like eyes rolling in his direction like the bloated finger of a dead girl pointed at him in accusation of her murder. Didn't want to picture the wilted acid-bright flowers that framed her like an intoxicated aura, or imagine the soft feel of lips violet and cold and soulless trailing on his skin like chips of diamond and ice, elegant and cutting and agonising and sweet. Didn't want to see her until absolutely necessary, until the class bell screamed in his ears and he could hold out no longer and why did everything surrounding her revolve around this perversely saccharine tension?

                It had been two weeks, two weeks and he had forgotten that she had taken to showing up early for his class. He wondered what that meant, if it meant anything at all. She entered the room and he wanted her gone, wanted to take hold of that damnable braid and drag her out of the dungeons, to the ends of the earth and beyond, but somehow knew, just _knew that her scalp would leave a bloody trail and she would follow it back and force her presence on him again and make him stitch her hair back into her sticky bald head, and she would stare at him all the while with those dead envy eyes until he was obliged to sew those shut as well._

                She copied down the assignment as she always did, quill scratching furiously into parchment, tattooing it with his words, and when she had finished, her glassy stare fell upon him, and a shiver haunted his spine and his pulse hammered against his ribs and his head shrieked with mad laughter "Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!"

                But no – no. His composure remained impeccable, his breath even and smooth, his voice low and rasping and fluid when he could not help but ask of her, "Why do you study me so incessantly?" Would she lie? She hadn't lied before, earlier, about the girl with the bruise on her neck and the gouges in her wrists. And would he lie, if she asked of him the same question?

                —Of course.

                Her head turned ever-so-slightly to the right, and the corpse eyes became half-lidded with the scarcest of misgivings, and he was reminded of the way she would twist her neck to half-bury her face in his pillow when his phantom mouth would bite roughly into the pale flesh of her throat just before the symphonic crescendo of their nightmare sonata would rain down on them each night in his bed.

                "Because I find you to be a creature of terrible beauty," she replied, her voice whisper-light and steel-sharp, and he regretted his query immediately. What the hell was he doing, pouring salt on this wound? She was a horrid little leech, a parasite, and he was feeding himself to her plague, a banquet of terror and flesh upon which he was allowing her to feast.

                _A moment of insanity, he told himself. __A moment, nothing more.__ A quaint visit, a quaint visit is all, to her Night's Plutonian shore. Only once, and nevermore._

                Gwendolyn's stare did not falter, did not waver, as she attempted to gauge the weight her answer had placed on his bony shoulders. But her Death remained unflinching, statue-still and infuriatingly Stoic. His eyes were locked to hers, and this time there was no key to break the gentle, holding spell adhering raven-black to envy-green.

                "Miss Cross..." he began, velvet-voiced and still unblinking, and in a dank corner of her mind Gwendolyn heard a piercing scream. He could not finish before the bodies began to fill the room, and, ripping his gaze from hers, Severus had never been so grateful for grand interruption of adolescent ineptitude that sliced through the fog that had gathered between them. Discarding the glass eyes of his dead doll as so many had done before, he slipped back into the folds of reality, away from cabbages and kings to schoolmaster and eager Alice, to Potions master and obedient pupil.

                Still, in cobwebbed crevice of his consciousness, he heard the caw of a raven, a caveat to remind him that he could turn a blind eye, but never a deaf ear, and a call as clear and coaxing as this would not be so easily silenced.


	11. A Symphony of Horror

Pride, accomplishment, content. I hope I didn't butcher Hagrid's accent; I did the best with it that I could. This one's for my cat, Shithead, for attempting to provide help by walking all over my keyboard while mewling cutely. And Anya, because exams sip rat piss.

**Part 11 – A Symphony of Horror**

                At dinner, Gwendolyn was considerably more exhausted than she had been in Potions. Her first detention had been with Professor McGonagall, and gods, was that woman's private library ever disorganised. It had surprised the Slytherin that someone so outwardly stern and put-together allowed such chaos to reign over something as prized as books, and had made that fact known despite her inclination towards respecting her elders. The ones she had no personal aversions to, anyway. In the end, she must have re-arranged and ordered at least several hundred pounds of parchment and leather, and now her shoulders ached agreeably, so much so that she was concerned for her arms – namely, whether or not they would continue to remain attached to her body when she reached for a roll.

                "What's wrong with you?" Malfoy asked upon her slight wince as she lifted her juice goblet.

                "McGonagall transfigured me into an octopus."

                "Did she? That hypocritical cow – after the hell she raised when Crouch the Crotch..." he trailed off, his face pinking faintly at a memory he'd yet to share with Gwendolyn.

                "I was being facetious," she said, ignoring the frown that next crossed the boy's pretty face. "She may as well have, though. I think my muscles have turned gelatinous."

                "Ha. Glad it wasn't me."

                "Happy about that decision to _not hold a knife to your girlfriend's throat, then? Where is she, anyway?"_

                "I don't know," Malfoy shrugged. "Why do you care?"

                "I don't care. But I'm not one to trust breaks in routine, especially not in the routines of my enemies."

                "Healthy philosophy."

                "It's yet to steer me wrong."

                "I think she's in her dormitory, trying to worry me into seeking her out and begging forgiveness or some bollocks like that. She's a looker, but she's not exactly a thinker – she ought to know by now that Malfoys never beg for anything. We see something we want, and we make it ours. If we lose interest in it...well, our manor wouldn't have half as many of the dust-catchers – valuable dust-catchers, mind you – in our attic as it does if we got rid of everything we didn't like anymore."

                "And are you planning on putting Pansy into your attic anytime soon?"

                He shrugged again, and Gwendolyn could tell that his nonchalance was forced. For all his ego and bluster, she had a feeling he craved the pug-faced girl's attention as much as any other sort, and Pansy would never disappoint in giving him that. That subtle security was probably what had kept them together for the last two or so months.

                She picked apart the roll, flicking the bits of it onto her plate, not feeling much like eating. Malfoy's words echoed in her ears, "We see something we want, and we make it ours," and she swung her gaze up to the High Table. Professor Snape's eyes were focused on some random point between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables, as though he found the floor entrancing. _Make it ours... her head whispered at her, and her mouth curled into a tiny, mischievous smile as her mind filled with a grandiose vision – Snape, Death, and the Nosferatu, her boys, all of them rattling inside her skull, running a Caucus-race around her brain. They would all win, of course, and she would distribute their prizes accordingly before tea with the March Mr. Munch and the Mad Poet Poe. _

_Oh, my dear Professor...if you could but glimpse the worlds I walk in...you would be content to join me, I think. You've already begun to see, haven't you? To realise the futility of your eyelids, for when they close, everything becomes darker still. Or perhaps you don't believe it, don't believe in me. It is...fine. I'll wind you like a clock, twisted and taut, backward and forward until your face travels back to when childhood reigned in your mind's eye and you consent to meet me in the wilted garden, the one behind the moon where the sun is frozen and the stars burn themselves black with every twinkle. We'll dance in the cemetery, drink the red waters of __Lunacy__Lake__ and feast upon the sour apples that fall from the psychosis tree. They're only sweet after they've hit the ground, you know – until Death comes to sugar them out of the branches, they're all spoilt and rotten, and that would never do._

"Looks like Lupin's hit his time of the month," said Malfoy, cutting into Gwendolyn's train of thought like a metallic shrapnel shard. He had followed her gaze up to the High Table, and had taken more notice of the Dark Arts professor's absence than of the Potions master's pensive look.

"What do you mean?" Gwendolyn asked him distantly, still half-distracted as Snape took a drink from his goblet that stained his lips with a faint blush-pink.

"You don't know? I never told you? Hm. That's odd..."

"Never told me what?"

"Professor Lupin's a werewolf."

There was a nigh-audible crack as Gwendolyn's mind returned to the Slytherin table, and she widened her eyes at the blond boy sitting next to her. "_What? And they let him teach here?"_

"They do. Dumbledore's got a thing for mangy strays, I think – Mudbloods, a werewolf, Potter...I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he hired a banshee to give voice lessons or a hag to teach the culinary arts," he sniffed, though Gwendolyn had stopped listening to him after the second 'werewolf'. Her eyes flickered rapidly back and forth on her plate of scraps, and Malfoy smirked at her reaction with curiosity mixed with disbelief. "What? Don't tell me _Lupin is the only thing that actually phases you."_

"I hate dogs," she muttered.

"Well, fuck me dead," he grinned, looking almost satisfied. "You're afraid of him now, aren't you?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," she snapped at him, recovering enough from her mild shock to shoot a scowl his way. In truth, she _wasn't afraid of Lupin, but now she was a hell of a lot more circumspect in her thoughts of him. For all her morbidity, and the love of darkness and death that she had possessed since she could remember, the only nightmares that had beleaguered her as a small child had been ones of wolves, be they chasing her, stalking her, prowling around the edge of her bed in the middle of the night. They had been her solitary fear, and though that had dimmed with age, she could not shake the unease that gripped her that her lone enemy of her formative years now presented himself to her in such a form as the benign, kindly professor with whom she had fifth period three days out of the week. How fitting that her one trepidation would have such an affable persona to him, while her one affection had quite the opposite._

"You are. You're terrified of the big, bad wolf," Malfoy teased. "You're scared shitless. You'll be able to do nothing but shake and piss all over yourself the next time you see him."

"I'll piss on _you is what I'll do," Gwendolyn threatened him, but was unable to keep back a playful smirk._

"Ew. You're nasty, Cross."

"And you're an asshole, Malfoy."

"Fair enough." He took a bite of turkey, and then a drink of his pumpkin juice. "What'll you do if you if he's seeing over detention anytime during the next two weeks?"

"I doubt he will. From what I've read of lycanthropes, it always takes them a good week or two to get back on their feet. Dumbledore probably wouldn't put an extra workload on him after all that. ...Would he?"

"Shaking and pissing," Malfoy repeated, shaking his head resignedly. "And don't bother getting your parents to owl the school about him – there've already been hundreds of letters. Dumbledore ignores them, it seems. Stupid of him. If he had any brains at all he'd be doing everything in his power to please the parents, especially with everything happening right now. But if the crusty old sod doesn't want the confidence of a thousand-odd witches and wizards, I'm certainly not going to be the one to inform him of that mistake."

Gwendolyn shifted slightly, paying no mind to manners as she propped up her elbow on the table and her chin on the L of her right thumb and forefinger thoughtfully. Malfoy's little rant had reminded her of the book still weighting down her rucksack, waiting to be combed through. She was hesitant to return to her dormitory to start her investigation – if Pansy was indeed already there, the pug-faced girl would no doubt attempt to distract her as much as possible, and it was doubtful much would get done then. The common room was out of the question. Too many students coming and going, some of which knew her well enough to ask what she was doing, and many of which wouldn't waste the opportunity to sneer at her lack of knowledge on the subject, as they had been raised with it. Briefly, she thought about retreating back to the brilliant storage room in the mystery wing she'd found earlier that day, but that idea was rebuffed, again with the reason of distraction. Exploration of the new and fantastic Nosferatu was all well and good, but not when she had other things that needed to take precedence before it.

And then it struck her – the dungeons. The Potions classroom wasn't the only one down there, and many of the others, she was positive, weren't in use. She could work in quiet, in the cold as she preferred, with the added bonus of Professor Snape being but a few doors away. Perfect.

Gwendolyn rose from her seat and left the Great Hall, telling Malfoy she wanted to have a shower before she collapsed from exhaustion. A last look up at the still-brooding Potions master, and she was out the doors, sore muscles already tingling with anticipation at what she was sure she would find.

~*~

                _Karkaroff, Igor – 1987^ _

_                Killian, Evangelia S. – 1988x _

_                Killian, Isidor T. – 1988* _

_                Knave, __Sylvania__ – 1986* _

_                Krueger, Hans O. – 1986* _

_Lestrange, Claude F. – 1987* _

_                Lestrange, Corinne L. – 1987* _

_                Levinskaya, Svetlana – 1988* _

_                Lilikov, Agniezca – 1987^ _

_                Lilikov, __Vladimir__ – 1987^ _

_                Lore, Klaus – 1986x _

                Gwendolyn skimmed down the extensive list – every witch and wizard ever accused of being in league with the Dark Lord, each name with the year of its owner's trial and small symbols of the outcomes – signs that they had been acquitted or pardoned, had struck a deal of some sort with the Ministry, were dead, or imprisoned in Azkaban. Malfoy, Lucius V. and Narcissa L. were both marked down as the first, much to Gwendolyn's lack of surprise. Nott, Phillip N. and Clarice Y. were also labelled as such.

                There were many other familiar names – Theodore and Caroline Montague, Marius and Rose Parkinson, Pervis and Francesca Pucey....All of these, she filed away in her memory, and stopped only when she found what she was looking for. There it was, written in precise black letters in between Sinistra, Cassius A. (a relative of the Astronomy professor's, Gwendolyn was sure, though next to his name was an 'X' – whomever he might have been, he was dead now) and Tombs, Basilius D.: Snape, Severus A. – 1986.

                She read over it again and again, grinding the information into her brain, if just to be completely sure her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. So it was true; the Potions master was indeed a Death Eater.

                Gwendolyn's hands trembled slightly, and she sat back in her chair, staring blankly at the dark wall across from her. Her suspicions had been confirmed, and the numb of accomplishment was beginning to sink in. Her breath fogged in the bitter cold air. She watched it swirl, then quickly dissipate, then swirl again like a series of miniature storm clouds, and smiled. The Potions master was a Death Eater. What a delightful little quirk.

                Turning back to the book, she flipped it back to the table of contents, where the Dark Mark stared up at her from above the list of records, she located the year of his trial, and turned the pages.

~*~

                Not far from where she studied, Gwendolyn's subject of interest stared down at his left forearm, at the ugly red mark marring the pallid flesh there. He ran over it with a soapy washrag roughly, knowing that it would never come clean no matter how hard he scrubbed at it – the burn was deep, searing through layers of muscle and sinew, and probably bone as well. Yes. When he died, and his body decomposed into a casket of rot, his skeleton would still bear this particular stain, this symbol that he had been damned long before he had been judged. The thought didn't bother him. He had known the risks and consequences of his actions those twenty years ago, and age had not changed that, had not led him into regret or remorse. Such futile emotions, so petty, so useless.

                He moved the washrag up to scour his upper arm and shoulder, then around his neck and down along his other arm in the same methodical manner in which he approached most everything in life. His hair fell into his face, dripping water down his front. Though it had been recently drawn, his bath had cooled quickly in the icy dungeon air, and he paid no mind to the slight discomfort of it. It was somewhat refreshing, actually – the sun had set hours ago, and with the moon's rising had come the persistent craving that he had come to expect by now. He was almost used to it. Almost.

                Severus was wary of sleep tonight. Since the wretched realisation that that early morning had delivered to him, he had been dreading unconsciousness, for he now held no illusions as to the nature of his dreams, and knew that this time, the bravura body that visited his mind every night would have a face, and that it would be one that he didn't care to see.

                Gwendolyn Cross. So pretty a name for so vile a creature, composed of sin itself, so very loathsome and so very tempting. Yet another ill-starred condemnation thrust in his face like so many others before it. He had wondered more than once what the hell it was about this...this _child that had absorbed every fabric of his subconscious, why his mind had chosen __her as the vessel upon which he was to enact his more insidious inclinations, and every time, he could not grasp an answer, no matter how ardently he groped for one. He felt as though he had been chosen for something about which he had no knowledge, and it unnerved him. It didn't take a manipulative genius to decipher that she appeared to have chosen him as much as he had her, though whether her predicament was anything akin to his, he did not know._

                Her words had been haunting him all day, that quiet murmur as though she'd felt he would hear her even if she hadn't spoken aloud. "Because I find you to be a creature of terrible beauty." Like him, she did not possess the flaw of needing to raise her voice in order to be heard. It was an inherently Slytherin trait – where others had to work to achieve such a level of instinctual respect, the serpents were born with the sort of pride that made such a labour needless. Generations of the ambitious and cunning had built most of them decent fortunes. Combined, they could very well own a large chunk of the earth, and that wisdom was not lost on any of them. As a collective, they had come quite close to ruling the immediate world many times, and they had never forgotten that, and still walked individually as though they had succeeded in doing so hundreds of years ago.

                She didn't walk like them, not exactly. The pride was there, and the cold, but not the lack of emotion. As impassive as she could school her face to be, there was a touch of expressiveness there that she would never be rid of. She was a dancer – of that much Severus was certain. Anyone could learn the steps he'd witnessed her execute with the Baron, and with him in dreams, but her movements had been far more liquid than that of a mere aristocrat exercising the steps they had been trained to know since childhood, and far more expressive. She was a performer, an artist, and when she danced, she was free, and it was a glorious sight to behold.

                He contemplated the blending of that freedom with his own – pain – within his dreams. Dance and hurt, the aching grace they spun between them like that of an intricate spider's web. Beauty and brutality. Here, in his craving-haze of heat and tired, blurry mind, it was all too easy for him to forget his position, her age. All too easy to want.

                _And__ you do want, he told himself. __You want so wholly it's maddening. Is it really such a dreadful thing to allow your sanity to fold?_

                "Yes..." he hissed aloud.

                _Why is that, do you think? Desire is ambition, and ambition is no weakness, not to you. It is an attribute to be nurtured, nourished, fed. Why not feed this desire?_

                "It is depraved. The bittersweet musings of flesh alone."

                _And yet__ it was spawned from your mind, in dreams. The first desire was not one of flesh – it was one of intellect, of thought. You paid no mind to her body until you realised the nature of your nightly mental encounters. This want is not beyond her – you know quite well she desires what you do._

                "She is _sixteen years old! She's scarcely more than a child – she has no idea what she wants, and I will __not be party to whatever fleeting infatuation with me that she may possess! I will __not indulge something as wanton as a schoolgirl's crush. It is beneath me."_

                _You fear it, don't you? You fear what she is doing to you. You fear her._

                "No..." he said slowly, "...no, not fear. Detestation. Loathing. Hate. Incomprehensible abhorrence of a little brat who knows not who she is dealing with. The ignorance surrounding this...quandary...disgusts me. _She disgusts me, for playing these ill-considered games, and I disgust myself for having joined her in their execution. There is no fear here; only revulsion."_

                _You're__ an excellent liar, Severus. Pity you were always too logical to be able to lie to yourself._

                He rinsed the soap from his skin, pulled the plug from the drain and rose, slipping into his dressing gown. His feet left small puddles of water on the stone floor as he strode into his bedchamber, pushing his still-damp hair out of his face and heading for the narrow writing desk that rested between two bookcases. What he was searching for was easily located in the desk's small drawer, and he watched it intently for a few moments before retrieving his wand from on top of the liquor cabinet and sparking a fire in the fireplace. On the cover of the book, little Alice broke away from her tea party with the Mad Hatter and the March Hair to blow him a kiss.

                He tossed the book into the flames without a second thought.

~*~

                Gwendolyn had been disappointed to find that, while there were pages upon pages of the full criminal accounts of others, there had been precious little information on the trial of Severus Snape – only that he had been given a full pardon for his activities as a Death Eater for 'reasons unfit to be disclosed'. Both the Notts and the Malfoys, she'd learned, had claimed to be under the Imperious Curse for the years leading up to Lord Voldemort's downfall, and had returned to the Light side's fold almost immediately following the Dark Lord's ruin. Those not so quick to denounce their master, like the Lestranges and the Killians, were now either dead or entombed in Azkaban, or had recently been moved to St. Mungo's.

                The list of victims had been far longer than the list of the accused. The Boneses, the McKinnons, the Longbottoms (Gwendolyn had been pleasantly surprised at that little piece of knowledge), the Prewetts, and finally the Potters, to name but a handful. And the confessions, some fearful, like Sylvania Knave, who begged in vain for Bartemius Crouch to have mercy; some madly proud, like Corinne Lestrange, who was passionate in her faith in Lord Voldemort. "The Dark Lord will rise again, Crouch!" the book read, and Gwendolyn could nearly hear the woman's voice screaming in her head. "Throw us into Azkaban; we will wait! He will rise again and will come for us, he will reward us beyond any of his other supporters! We alone were faithful! We alone tried to find him!" It sent a shiver up her spine, and she decided she liked Mrs. Corinne L. Lestrange.

                Gwendolyn shut the book and shoved it back into her rucksack. She wasn't certain of the time, but she knew that it was late – quite possibly early morning. Sleep was not in the cards tonight, but she could drop off the book in her dormitory, wash up and change into a clean set of robes before slipping out again to meet with the Bloody Baron in the Great Hall.

                She was already halfway down the corridor that would lead her to the Slytherin common room when something caught her attention – voices, heated ones, coming from a room just off to her left. They sounded young, far too young to be professors, and Gwendolyn took the lack of risk as an invitation to spoil her curiosity. The large wooden door was closed, but the gap between its bottom and the floor was at least an inch, and a dim yellow light like that of a wand's streamed through the crack. Her own wand was unlit, and it was doubtful that they would notice the shadows of her feet if she stepped close to listen.

                Their words were muffled, and she only managed to understand a few – 'don't care'; 'kill me'; 'fuck you' – one male, one female, the former exasperated, and the latter near-tears. It wasn't until one of them threw something of a tantrum-like outburst that Gwendolyn realised just who was behind that door at such an hour. "If you like her so much then why don't you just go fuck _her?! And hey, then you can take turns slitting each other's throats!" It seemed as though Pansy and Malfoy were finally having their little confrontation._

                "_I don't want to fuck her!" Malfoy's voice shouted. "She's just a friend – why are you so damn jealous of her?"_

                "Because if I held a knife to _her throat, you'd actually bat an eyelash! You don't care about me – as long as you've got your precious Gwendolyn to talk to, you don't give a flying fuck about me unless we are, indeed, __fucking at the time!"_

                "You're full of shit."

                "No, Draco, _you're full of shit! Everything that leaves your mouth is shit, and I put up with it! I take your foul tongue in my mouth and I smile at the taste of it, and you never even notice!"_

                "If you hate it all so much, then why the fuck are you still with me?"

                "Who else is going to be?! Cross? You know very well she wouldn't stand for the chauvinistic crap you dish out. I mean, for fuck's sake, you think I don't know what people say about us? About _me for looking like I enjoy the way you treat me? I'm your ornament, Draco; it's what I was brought up to be, and I'm damn good at it. I make you look good, and I make sure you feel good. I'm an asset to your image, and if you had half-a-mind you would realise it and stop turning it into a fucking joke before you make yourself look like a fool." _

                Malfoy was silent for a few minutes, and the only sounds resonating through the door were Pansy's occasional sniffles. Gwendolyn found herself mildly surprised that the pug-faced girl had so freely admitted to being a trophy girlfriend. Less so that she wasn't completely satisfied with the relationship, and made that fact known. _Let the record show that today marks a turning point in the social politics of Slytherin House – Pansy Parkinson actually showed some depth, and Draco Malfoy has yet to scold her for it._

                Gwendolyn hadn't been wrong about Malfoy, either – judging from the lack of a female storming from the room at his incessant berating, he wasn't all that eager to give Pansy up. They complimented each other well in that respect: Each serving the other's needs, albeit unintentionally in his case. It could have almost passed for romantic. After all, there are many contexts to meant-to-be. Some are just more practical than others. He was raised to wear a woman as though she were a decoration, and she was born to act as such.

                "...all right," Malfoy spoke again, finally. "A negotiation, then. I'll take you more seriously, and you stop throwing jealous fits about Gwendolyn." The mentioned girl wanted to tell him how proud Lucius would be of him at that moment. Cold, shrewd business skills applied to his personal life. It was the sort of trait his father would be appreciative of, and Malfoy would be pleased to hear it. As it was, she kept quiet, and waited for Pansy's reply.

                After a short while, there was a soft, "Okay...deal," and Gwendolyn bit back a sigh. Practical romanticism aside, she really didn't want more of the Parkinson girl hanging around than absolutely necessary. But who knew? Perhaps Malfoy's words had actually sunken in and she would be nearly tolerable. Perhaps...though Gwendolyn doubted it.

~*~

                A blizzard had kicked up by lunchtime, and by the end of school hours, most could be found indoors, huddled near fireplaces with books and the companionship of friends. Such was not the case for Gwendolyn, who was to serve her second detention with Hagrid, the gamekeeper, which meant crossing the snow-riddled grounds to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, where his hut was located. Filch led the way by the light of a lantern, for the storm had brought darkness with it much more quickly than usual. She followed him a few paces behind, and could still hear his sour grumblings despite the howling winds. Snowflakes whipped at her face and stung her skin, and her eyelashes nearly froze together in the short time it took to walk from the castle to the humble yet cosy-looking house at the forest's perimeter.

                Filch dropped her off with a barked "Detention" at Hagrid, who ushered her inside, mumbling something about who would be thick-skulled enough to assign a student to a detention with him in such ghastly weather.

                "Professor Snape," Gwendolyn said softly, and the half-giant squinted at her from beneath knitted, bushy eyebrows.

                "What?"

                "You were wondering who had assigned me my detention; it was Professor Snape."

                "That so? One o' his own students? S'not like him...man hasn' bin actin' himself lately..."

                "Have you known him long?" she asked.

                "Since he was a student here. Would yeh fancy a cuppa tea, warm yeh up a bit?"

                "Please, that would be lovely."

                "Go on, then, have a seat." He gestured to one of the massive chairs stationed at an equally massive table, and Gwendolyn sat, her toes barely skimming the floor. She took a moment to survey her surroundings. Everything in the hut had been enlarged in size – the cupboards, table and chairs, even the dirty plates and cups stacked in the basic in the kitchen area of the cabin were at least twice what their bulk should have been. She was just looking over the mammoth bed resting at the centre of one wall (and arching a brow at the indecency of having such a piece of furniture visible while one is entertaining company, detention or none), when he thumped back over with a clay teapot in one hand, two large cups in the other.

                "Do yeh take sugar?"

                "Yes, thank you."

                He dropped in two great lumps, and sat down in the seat next to her to attend to his own cup.

                "There's not much fer us ter be doin', what with the weather an' all. Night like this, yeh don' wanna be wanderin' through the forest, no matter how bad Professor Sprout's bin needin' Mooncalf dung for them plants o' hers. S'hard ter see in the snow, anyway. Blends righ' in, it does. But I doubt yeh'll be wantin' ter hear about that..."

                Gwendolyn's mouth twitched in what could pass for a polite smile, and she took a sip of her tea. She'd had better.

                There was an odd sort of whining sound from beneath the table, and she frowned. Hagrid grinned pleasantly through his wiry beard.

                "Oh, that's jus' Fang, me dog." _Oh, bloody perfect, that, Gwendolyn mentally scoffed, bringing her legs around to the side of the chair and away from the invisible beast. "Do yeh want me ter call him out? He's jus' shy 'round strangers, is all."_

                "No – that's quite all right, thank you."

                The gamekeeper shrugged and reached beneath the table, Gwendolyn guessed to pat the thing. She looked around for something to distract her from the canine's presence, and, spotting a recent copy of the _Daily Prophet on the table, she pulled it over and read the headline: "Minister of Magic Orders More Prisoners Relocated." The articles author was a woman by the name of Raven Dormouse, and the picture directly beneath the heading was one of two Aurors leading an unrecognisable man in a straightjacket and muzzle into what could best be described as an iron cage. The caption beneath it told her that the man was none other Claude F. Lestrange, and Azkaban didn't appear to have agreed with him. The bottom half of his face was not visible, but his eyes were two glittering marbles in deep, grey-rimmed sockets, and his tall frame, which might have once been intimidating, was painfully thin._

                "He looks as though he wishes to scream, but has forgotten how," she murmured, frowning at the picture as though it were a riddle. Hagrid glanced over at what she was reading, and grunted in an acknowledging sort of way.

                "Lestrange," he muttered, as though the word brought a putrid taste to his tongue. "He never was one for talkin' much. His wife always had a bit more ter say."

                Gwendolyn raised her eyes to meet the gamekeeper's, and she narrowed them slightly. "Did you know them as well?"

                His pink, round face grew darker, more serious. "Not by choice. Put that away; yeh don' wanna be readin' about stuff like that."

                "On the contrary. I find it all rather fascinating."

                "There was nothin' fascinatin' about it," he said, his tone grave. "Them were terrible times, terrible things happenin'. Yeh got no business diggin' around in ugly business like that."

                "I disagree. There's no better teacher than history if one wishes to learn from the mistakes of the past. To ignore it simply because it's unpleasant will only give it leave to repeat itself." She paused, then added, "As is evidenced by the current goings-on in our world."

                Hagrid squinted at her, trying to figure out what was going on behind those round, impassive eyes that stared back at his so openly. She supposed he had concluded his search fairly unsuccessful, for he averted his gaze and cleared his throat before taking a gulp of his tea. Gwendolyn, however, was not so eager to let the subject drop.

                "How long have you been working here, Mr. Hagrid?"

                "Oh...I'd say 'round fifty years or so. Yeah, that sounds 'bout right."

                "Fifty years..." She did the math quickly in her head, and arched an eyebrow. "So you would have known – or at least known _of – almost every witch and wizard who was either accused of being or proved to be an accomplice of Lord Voldemort's. Excluding those who went to Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, of course."_

                He had tensed at her use of the Dark Lord's name, and his frown deepened.

                "What are you gettin' at, girl?" he asked slowly, apprehensively.

                "Well, you would have seen them all when they were children, wouldn't you? You watched them all grow up; it must feel strange to know what was lurking in the Hogwarts halls all that time. Does it worry you still, that something foreboding might still be breeding underneath your very nose? All the professors at this school, with all they must have seen over the years, and yet none of them seem overtly concerned with the future occupations of their pupils. And if they are, I've certainly never seen them show it."

                He looked mildly confused, and his voice was gruff and somewhat indignant when he spoke. "What's yer point?"

                "I've already made it," she said shortly, and made no move to make it again. If his grasp of the English language wasn't sufficient enough for him to follow a simple conversation – one where he was the topic, no less – then speaking with him had been a worthless venture. She had very little patience for those of very little brain, and her tolerance was decidedly lacking as well. "Are you going to put me to work at all, or is this little tea party meant to be my punishment?"

                If he caught the thinly veiled insult, he gave no outward indication of it. From the way the smile reached his beetle-black eyes (which were nowhere near as captivating as Professor Snape's, Gwendolyn decided), he probably thought she had been making a joke. "I can't see what work there is ter give yeh. This storm doesn't look like it's gonna be lettin' up anytime soon. Figured I'd keep yeh out here long enough ter satisfy Filch – he'd accuse yeh of skippin' out on yer detention if he caught yeh back at the castle too soon."

                "Thank you for your concern, but I'd much rather return to my dormitory."

                "Are yeh sure? It's awful cold out there, can't see much, neither."

                "I'm positive. I've got Arithmancy homework; I've already fallen behind in that class, and I don't want to make a habit of that." It wasn't a total lie – her tardiness in Vector's class had set her back a good portion of a lesson, though she probably wouldn't actually study up on it until the night before their next test.

                "Well...all righ'. Can yeh make it back ter the castle on yer own?"

                "I shouldn't have any trouble with it. Good evening, Mr. Hagrid." She rose quickly, and Fang's small whimper from beneath the table only made her quicken her pace. She was halfway out the door when the gamekeeper's "Evenin'" reached her ears. 

                A gust of wind and snow pushed against her as she took out her wand. "Point me," she told it, and it immediately swivelled to the North. The hut was to the east of the school; all she had to do was head west.

                She was back at the castle within ten minutes, in the Slytherin common room in twenty, and in her dormitory in twenty-one, though Arithmancy homework was nowhere on her agenda. Blaise was the only other one in the dorm, on her bed, painting her fingernails a deep blue. She made no move to greet other girl's presence other than a slight glance, which Gwendolyn didn't notice, as she was too busy changing. She pulled her school robes back on over her thick, pale tights and black leotard, grabbed her toe-shoes from her trunk and stuffed them in her pocket, and padded up once more to the common room.

                "Hey, Cross, where're you headed?" Montague called to her, pausing his chess game with Nott.

                "For a walk."

                "But you don't—" Too late – she was already out the door. "—have any shoes on." He looked questioningly at Nott, who only shrugged and made his move, taking Montague's bishop.

                It hadn't taken long to clear a decent-sized space in the storage room. Most everything was broken in some way or another, so she hadn't had to worry about keeping things neat and unblemished. The dusty floor turned the feet of her tights black, and her toe-shoes probably wouldn't fare too well, either, though she didn't much care. They could always be cleaned, and besides, she quite liked worn things. Scuffs and wear and tear gave things character.

                She shed her robes, laced on her toe- shoes, and stretched during her Nosferatu's rather light beginnings, bending and twisting her muscles against their burning protestations until they performed the manoeuvres they had slid so easily into not five years previous. A stack of broken chairs provided a makeshift barre, and as the music picked up, so did her movements. Basic at first – tendus, glissés, fondus and ronds de jambe à terre – and then more complex – entrechats, pirouettes, splits and leaps with feather-light falls. Her gaze fell upon the sputtering pictures flashing against the wall, upon the tragic magnificence of the strangely fanged man there – Count Orlok, she'd learned his name was – and her mind ripped in a fissure of thoughts of her darling Severus Snape. She envisioned him there with her, the sole audience member in a private recital. She spun thrice on pointe, her neck twisting rapidly around to follow her body, and she could picture the man on the wall having a very different visage, one with eyes of ink and hair of raven plumes.

                She danced through Orlok's first taste of Hutter's blood, and through the vampire's obsession with the man's wife, Ellen, who had Gwendolyn's own face. Through Orlok's journey about the ship of death, where he saw fit to leave its crewmembers the parting give of plague, and it was she who indulged the vampire's craving until the first crow of the cock, and it was he for and with whom she died at dawn's first light.

                She danced well past the end of the film, when the wall depicted nothing but a blinking white light and the only sound in the room was the rickety-racket of the machine that continued to whirl, and the rasping sighs of her own breath, strained from exertion. In her head, the music still played, and her body was caught in its cyclone, unable to stop though her leotard was drenched with sweat and her muscles were sore and shaking and her heart nearly broke her ribs with the ferocity with which it was beating. The violins turned to screams, and the cellos to sobs, and it wasn't until both had gone hoarse that she at last collapsed on the dirty floor, and could not bring herself to move for quite some time.

                Her ankles were swollen around the ribbons of her toe-shoes, and when she gingerly pulled them off she was not surprised to find that her feet were bleeding, staining her tights as though she had dipped her toes in pools of vermilion. The pain of it was sweet.

                She rose and turned off the noisy contraption, shrugged back into her school robes and nestled her toe-shoes once again in her pocket. The blizzard had passed – she wasn't sure how long she had been there, but obviously it had been hours – and the room was illuminated in silvery-blue moonlight. Gwendolyn bade it farewell and stepped out into the corridor, treading lightly so as not to leave any bloody footprints that would betray her presence there. Forcing her feet to obey her will to walk, she made her way back down to the dungeons.

~*~

                "Two hundred and thirty-seven points thus far – we're in the lead."

                "We're always in the lead until Potter's annual end of the year display of stupidity."

                "Point." Professor Sinistra leaned against Snape's desk, thumbing through the Slytherin House book in which they kept track of their students – detentions, points won and lost, everything was well-documented through the grace of an enchanted quill, and gone over once a month by the two alumni of the serpent House. "Still, perhaps we'll get lucky this year."

                "We're Slytherins, Selene. The only luck that dares to touch us is that which we make ourselves."

                Sinistra glanced back at him, her eyes glittering strangely. "I know." He glared up at her in an expression of finality; she made no attempt to censure the hint, and stood. "I'd best be leaving, then. I've a class to teach in an hour – Gryffindor and Hufflepuff second-years. They're monsters."

                "Quite," was his clipped reply as he, too, rose and made to follow her out of the room. "I myself must have a discussion with the Baron."

                "Oh? Whatever for?"

                "Peeves. He's been behaving as more of a nuisance than usual. Filch is dangerously close to an aneurysm. I told him I would...intervene on his behalf."

                "How very gracious of you," the Astronomy professor scoffed, and Severus sneered at her sarcasm as they headed down the hall. She noticed the pale, black-clad figure swaying twenty feet in front of them before he did, though once he caught sight of it, he knew precisely who it was. "Who is—" Sinistra started. He cut her off.

                "Cross. What are you doing out of bed?" he demanded, agitation making his skin crawl. _Agitation.__ Is that what they're calling it these days? He pushed the thought away._

                "I lost track of time," the girl murmured, leaning with one arm braced against the wall as though she were taking a rest from a lengthy journey. "Have you seen it? The track of time?"

                He scowled deeply at her as he and the Astronomy professor approached her. "What nonsense are you talking about?"

                She didn't answer, and beside him, Sinistra let out a small gasp. "Bloody hell, girl, what happened to your feet?"

                Severus followed her gaze down to the bottom of his student's robes. Peeking out were stocking-covered feet, the toes of which were stained brown with dried blood, and glossy red with fresh, and he couldn't help but imagine taking a brush and dipping it into the crimson to paint brilliant rings around knee-socks.

                "I was dancing," the girl said, and offered no further explanation.

                "Why didn't you go to the hospital wing to have your feet taken care of?" Severus barked, and Sinistra frowned at him as she knelt in front of the student and gently took the injured left foot in her hands to examine it more closely.

                "The hospital wing's closed at this hour, Severus."

                "That's no excuse for her to be tracking blood throughout the corridors. She could have cleaned herself up in a washroom."

                "I didn't track blood," Cross protested. The two teachers ignored her.

                "Oh, yes, tap water and paper towels. The finest in medical care." The Astronomy professor rolled her eyes and dropped the foot she had hold of. "Surely you have something for her – a wound-cleaning potion, or at least a pain-numbing one? Of course you do," she answered for him, and stood again, turning to Gwendolyn. "I really must get back to my tower before my class does. Professor Snape will take care of your feet. _Won't you, Professor?"_

                Severus ground his teeth, his most terrifying scowl sliding over his features. Sinistra seemed unaffected by it and flashed him a brilliant grin before carrying on her way. He watched her go until she round the corner that would take her up to the ground floor of the castle before turning back to the Cross girl, who stared widely up at him, a tiny smile playing at the corners of her mouth that he wanted to slap off her face.

                "Come on," he spat, spinning on his heel and starting for the Potions classroom. Once there, he pulled one of the tables over to the basin and ordered her sit on it before ducking back out of the room again to retrieve the necessary items from his office.

                His hands moved erratically as he reached for this and that – bandages, a washrag, the cleaning and numbing potions he always kept on-hand in case of any mishaps during class time. _Get a grip on yourself, for fuck's sake! his mind commanded of his body. __She's__ sixteen years old, she's your student, and she is injured. It – ends – there. He shut his eyes and took a deep, composing breath before returning to the classroom, shoving the door open so hard that it slammed shut of its own volition behind him. She was right where he'd left her, sitting on the table with her knees tucked to her chest and her ankles crossed. She'd removed her school robes, and was now in nothing more than what could have passed as a swimsuit over thick dancing tights._

                "Put your feet in the basin," he instructed, setting the supplies down next to her. She complied without a word.

                Severus moved around to the side of the basin and took her left foot in his hand, showing none of the care with it that Sinistra had. He wasn't about to ask her to remove the tights which covered the wounds, as she would have had to remove her leotard as well to do so – an uninvited notion that slunk into his head regardless.

                "They're ruined anyway," he muttered, and tore them off from the ankle on down, tossing the bloodied fabric into the rubbish bin. Her toes were in quite a state – the nails there were apparently the cause of the bleeding. Some had been ripped back, others dug into the surrounding skin far too deeply, and the proximate flesh was swollen and purpled with bruises.

                He turned on the taps, and icy water began to flow out of the stone gargoyle's mouth. He dampened the washrag, began to wipe her foot clean and, against his better judgement, did so gently. She flinched slightly, and he smirked, pressing down harder, making it hurt more, stopping when the next muted sound she made wasn't one of pain at all. He paused, looked at her. Her face was as impassive as ever, corpse-like eyes gazing glassily into his.

                He continued, ripping the material from her right foot just as easily as her left, cleaning both before pouring a small amount of the antiseptic potion over each and dabbing at the excess with a short length of gauze. He made to apply the numbing potion, but stopped him by placing a hand on his arm and shaking her head. His eyes narrowed at her, but he set the potion aside and began to wrap her feet expertly in bandages, binding them tighter than necessary.

                When he had finished, he gripped the edge of the basin, forcing his fingers to keep a loose hold. "You're dismissed," he muttered darkly. The girl did not move, and he turned to glare at her. "I said you are dismissed."

                "Did it hurt?"

                His upper lip curled back in distaste at her voice. "Did what hurt?"

                She moved quickly, uncharacteristically so, sliding her hand up his left wrist, along his forearm. "This." Her fingers stung cold against his mark, and he jerked back, his eyes suddenly quite wild with questions and outrage.

                "_That," he hissed dangerously, "is none of your concern." He didn't ask her how she knew – she was a manipulative little thing, and he would put nothing past her._

                "Can I see it?"

                Perhaps it was the tone of the request that got to him, that child-like lilt that brought back the image of little Alice blowing him a kiss, and the way she'd writhed in the fire he'd abandoned her to. Something in his mind broke, and without thinking Severus seized the Cross girl by her wrist and yanked her down from the table, threw her violently against the wall with such force that the air gasped free from her lungs. Her knees buckled, and he held her standing with a hand clasped 'round her throat that gave her just enough leave to breathe. He moved his face gravely close to hers; he could feel her hot breath on his cheek, and sneered in disgust.

                "Whatever little games you're playing, Miss Cross," he growled, his voice a mixture of hissing silk and grating gravel, "I advise you to put an end to them very, very quickly. You think you want this, you think you want pain?" He pressed the heel of his boot into her toes, twisting it, grinding it against the bruises and coercing fresh blood into flowing. Her expression didn't falter, and the only indication that she'd felt anything was a slight nod of her head. "You're a little girl, an insipid, ignorant little girl who knows nothing of what she wants. You don't know pain. You don't know desire. You can't even begin to understand what those things are, what they entail. You, Miss Cross, and your inanity, make me sick."

                She continued to hold his gaze through half-lidded eyes, and it was he who first broke away, shoving her aside. She staggered twice and glared up at him, and he was unprepared for her assault when she threw herself back at him, twisting her hands in his robes and pulling him down to crush her mouth against his in a brutal kiss. Her tongue snaked along his, and through the sensory contrasts of its heat and the chill of her lips, realisation blindsided him. This was not their first kiss.

                His mind struggled to absorb and repel the information simultaneously, and he roughly pushed her back. She hit the desk with a small grunt, and if looks could kill Severus had no doubt that he would have been dead where he stood, and only slightly more that that would stop her from what she wished to do to him. They were both statue-still, and both breathing heavily. He fought back a shiver at the sudden absence of the fever of addiction that she had stolen from him, could still feel the imprints of her hands on his chest, and did the only thing that he could think of to do, the only thing that drove its way through the fog of wanting to kiss her again....

                He fled.


	12. The Carny of Mr. Dark (Danse de Mort, Ac...

Ahem. Yes. Well. The most difficult chapter to write thus far, and thank the gods I'm finally bloody finished with it. Couple of notes: To bosch; you're welcome. :) To EmmaCF; it can't. Sometimes I wish it _could, but...no. And to Magda; no, I was in no way inspired by this 'KoRnDolly' you speak of. Gwendolyn has been in my head for years. And now we proceed to..._

**Part 12 – The Carny of Mr. Dark**

**(Danse de Mort, Act Three)**

                She watched him go, and did not follow. What was done, was done, and his escape was but a temporary one.

                She did not leave the classroom for some time, content to stay at the scene of the crime and wrap herself in its recent memory. He had been warm, so warm compared to her. Warm lips, and a dirty olive taste on his tongue that was all too familiar to be coincidence. Warm fingers clasped tightly around her throat, pressing into her pulse. Warm.

                The pain in her left foot was still both dull and sharp, a sort of throbbing prickle, and she cherished it. A spot of crimson bled through the bandages that were soiled with the dust of his boot, blurring white and brown and red. Blurry. That's how she felt –  as though someone had taken a damp paintbrush to her mind and swept it this way and that, blending its colours together to form a muddled gradient of vivid feelings and cloudy thoughts. The urge to see him, to touch him again, to undertake the unfinished business that still hung in the air was strong, and yet, at the same time, she felt strangely satisfied, as though she had curved past a turning point – the second sought confirmation in as many days. She was swinging 'round a tightrope on which he was precariously balanced and dangerously close to falling off of. His self-control had kept him from plummeting this time, but only by a thread.

                When he did fall, he would grope madly for her hand to keep him from plunging to his death. She would allow his grip to slip through her fingers, and laugh at the sound of his skull cracking against the ground before joining him, using his body to break her fall before kissing his dead lips with such ferocity that he would be wont to rise from his grave just to dine on her passions again. That was as it should be. Gwendolyn detested stories of weak, fragile lovers who sought their salvation in each other. That was not love – that was dependence, a crutch. They didn't know true passion; only the clumsy lust of youth, for salvation makes everyone young again, young and innocent and consequentially inexperienced, no matter how to the contrary one might have been in the throws of damnation.

                No. Give her this love, this cruel, excruciating beast that consumed so savagely it left no room for tenderness, no room for softness. This wild, untameable thing that killed without conscience and caused one to feel so entirely that one's heart had no choice but to wither with wear, a fist of leather pounding inside one's chest until even that grew to be too much of a strain. Love, pain, hate, death; they were the same. Severus Snape realised this – she had felt it in his kiss, in his need to hurt her, and his enjoyment of it – he realised, oh yes. The only thing that was left, was acceptance.            

~*~

                He slammed the door to his private chambers, an act increasing in its occurrence, and pressed his back up against it, trying to catch his breath. He felt suffocated, asphyxiated, as though his hands had been gripping his own throat instead of hers. His fingers were balled up into fists of restraint – they wanted to be back on that throat, back on it and squeezing until her face turned death-blue and her jaw was slack with gasping for air, and his mouth wanted to be pressed to those parted purple lips and sup from her what little life she had left.

                The girl from the alleyway who had giggled at his presence and his merciless intentions, his dead doll with a sawdust soul, his Alice, writhing in flames. He was that fire, that blistering, scorching heat that elicited from her an ecstasy the likes of which he had never known before. She had drunk his fever dry, and thrived on the burn. He knew that now, knew it and gods help him he took pleasure in it. It was not the draught he had been craving – she was a living death all her own.

                _You are depraved. Mad._

                Depraved, mad, bubbling with a sickening mixture of lust and hatred, needing her, needing to destroy her, to dig his blunt nails into her flesh as they embraced and taste the ambrosia of her tears and find the melody in her screams, yes, all of those things he was and wanted. All of those things he loathed.

                What he'd said to her – "You don't know pain. You don't know desire." She didn't know them – she was muse to them, some misplaced page of Greek mythology that had been left to rot, and all those unfortunate enough to stumble upon her would be inspired with revelations of the utmost revulsion. Jezebel, demon, devil, succubus; original sin poured into the lithe body of a dancer and the porcelain face of a doll. She had not been created from Adam's rib – she had devoured it, and gutted him for more, and made that first Muggle just as hungry for that delicious decadence as she had been.

                She had violated his dreams, crept her way into his consciousness, and was now slithering at his heels, slowly but surely compressing his body into her coiling vice, wrapping him in temptation and sin and drawing him ever closer into hell itself, into the clutches of the one that had once been most dear to He Himself, as though he hadn't already been skirting along that edge.

                "Thou shalt not kill." Wasn't that one of the commandments in Christian mythology? Severus had studied it lightly in one of his many pursuits for knowledge, this grand story that so many Muggles had chosen to live their lives by, or base their lives against. He had committed that forbidden act more times than he cared to keep track of, and had savoured each and every one of them.

                One – eighteen years ago, on the ides of March, he could remember – he had executed on the outskirts of London, far enough away from the city as to afford some semblance of privacy, though not far enough to escape the acid in the rain. It had been raining that day, large, plump droplets cushioned by waves of stinking, polluted fog. The streets had been steaming as though it had not been water falling from the sky, but rather fire, hellfire and brimstone and bile and everything deemed putridly apocalyptic. It had been one of his fonder memories – the thick stench that hung in the air had reminded him of his blessed potions. Now, she tainted even that, as he would have sworn to seeing a doll dancing in the fire-drops out of the corner of his eye if he hadn't already known better.

                "Damn her," he hissed, pushing off from the door to pace the length of the room, seventeen steps forward, seventeen steps back. Constant. Unchanging. Sane. "Damn _me." The last word was accompanied with a physical burst of outrage, and Severus stared at the fragments of the mirror that had fallen victim to his wrath, the split glass still clinging desperately to its frame in a mocking reflection of his mentality. He forced himself to calm, and stilled, though his flesh still hummed with an icy fury that he had to fight to contain. How he hated that girl, hated himself even more for allowing his self-control to degenerate to such a debauched level as this, and for feeling as though he deserved every lashing of pain she yearned to give him as much as he yearned to give her._

                _Is that not your way, to play both sides? Light and Dark, good and evil, masochist and sadist. You do not seek redemption; you crave punishment, and you revel in punishing others because being haunted pleases you. Where would you be without your torment? An empty carcass. A hollow shell. You are not control. You are not containment. You are chained to your covetings. You enslave yourself by your own command. You are contradiction. You are logic, and you are without reason. You cannot fight this insanity, Severus. You are already insane._

                He swallowed, drew in a breath slowly to stave off its shaking. "I...am _not...insane."_

                _You converse with a voice in your head. That alone should be proof enough._

                "My own thoughts. My own words."

                _Schizophrenia, delusion, madness, madness, madness!___

                "_I...am NOT...INSANE!" he roared, seizing the nearest objects – a ceramic mortar and pestle – and twisting to hurl them against the far wall. They broke against it with the dull sound of shattering clay that did not satisfy his temper, and he spun to rid the table on which the cracked mirror sat of all that it held with one violent strike of his arm._

                He wouldn't bother with straightening the mess that night. Instead, he stalked into his washroom, shed the robes infected with her filthy touch as he drew a bath, stepped into the tub. The water, glacial at one end and scalding near the drain, was a shock to his system, one that he paid no mind to. Quickly he soaped up the washrag and began to scrub himself clean, rubbing until his skin was pink and raw, then ruthlessly attacking it again, ridding his body of her foul caress that had seeped through the material of his robes. He refused to acknowledge the exercise's futility. Her mark was deeper than cloth, deeper than flesh, staining the very fabric of his being and burning just as black as the scar that disfigured the fore of his left arm.

~*~

                He was not at breakfast the next day, nor lunch, and she knew that that had everything to do with her. When she showed up early for Potions, he had again been absent, and she did not see him until the start-of-class bell rang, when he arrived to allow his students into the classroom. Throughout the lesson, he did not look at her once, merely kept his eyes on his desk and occasionally other students, and when he sauntered between the rows to note their progress, he spoke only to Malfoy when he came to their station. The trend continued throughout the rest of the week as well, and by the next Wednesday, an itch of edginess had begun to tickle at Gwendolyn's skin.

                Severus himself lacked her impatience, too busy was he warding off the dark tendrils curling like black ivy around his mentality, spreading like weeds, like disease, covering and lacing through his consciousness like that damnable braid she perpetually twisted her hair into. He did not have to look at her to see her, could not see her in a light that didn't provoke a sickly satisfaction in his head. He pictured her broken, conjured her body in his mind and shattered its fragile frame, and felt pleasure. Watched her gaze up at him, envy-green eyes wide with whites spiked fear-red, and felt adoration. Heard her rasping sobs like perverted Parseltongue, and felt delight. Tasted the blood-stained glass of her skin, salt-sweet and leaching poison that stung sharp on the tip of his tongue, and felt hunger.

                Her hands shook, shivered like frightened spiders when she sliced at her ingredients in his class, and every time, he prayed that the knife would slip to nick her wrist. But knowing her, she would simply nurse the vein until it scabbed, ingest the blood back into her system and be all the more life-like for it. His current embittered musing as he watched her exchange a hiss with the other snake, the Devil's son, who sneered through a veil of shimmering emerald cauldron smoke, lip curling back to reveal a flash of pink gums above waxy white teeth. They were quite the deadly breed of children, this fresh generation of stigmatised zombies. Their parents really had outdone themselves in crafting such beautiful demons, such striking corpses. When they died, their deaths, like all deaths, would be particularly stunning in their splendour. A generation of warped halos composed of the most unholy light, of black wings and acid-corroded miracles, and she was in the thick of it, and she revelled in it.

                It disturbed him, and that irritation was in no way spawned out of worry for her soul. Rather, it was because she had drawn him into it with her, into those grey fields of bleached flowers and rancid riddles, and because in some unconscious way, he had gone with her willingly, willingly and kicking and screaming all the while. Perhaps she had recognised him as a like spirit – they were, he knew. Alike. Contradictions. Mad. Old souls recycled many times over who had eagerly fallen early from grace to dip into these bodies, to stake a claim in these dark times. They had forsaken holiness to play in this land, this vicious, wild-eyed land ripe with shadows, perfect for a lethal game of hide-and-seek. Yes. Alike. A fact that brought with it a knowledge that Severus had memorised and embossed like a tombstone's engraving on his braid: Evil begets evil. Two wrongs do not make a right. No love, and nothing worthy of love would ever be spawned of this dance.

                They say everyone has a soul mate, one person in all the world that carries with them the power to make another whole, and vice-versa. A soul, when it descends from heaven to earth, splits in two, and only when the two bodies it inhabits find each other can it achieve happiness, and a demon, when it rises in a possession, remains whole, smothers the half-a-soul until it encompasses the whole of the body. In Severus and Gwendolyn, the latter had taken a bit of a different route. In them, it wasn't just the soul that had been broken in two – the demon had cracked a fissure as well. Half-a-soul, half-a-demon, light and dark, fire and ice, pleasure and pain, longing and loathing. Contradiction. Bipolar. They complimented each other in the most wicked of ways; they were mistakes, drawn to each other because of the quiet promise, the soothing knowledge that their desire cradled their destruction. Forsaken, forgiven. Contradiction. Madness.

                Madness. He still refused to utter the word in allusion to himself, still clung feebly to his opposition of the unsavoury label. _Hypocrisy.__ Contradiction. The looking-glass in his private chambers was still splintered in its frame. He hadn't looked at it since the night he had embedded his fist into it. Why hadn't he disposed of it? __Denial; acknowledgement.__ Contradiction. Her feet had been bloodied and bruised in his most recent dreams. An insignificant detail; their bodies were always bloodied and bruised after their dance. __Beauty; brutality.__ Contradiction. _

                "Shut up," he spat under his breath.

                Near the front of the room, one of the Gryffindor boys – Thomas – darted warm brown eyes inquisitively in his direction. Severus scowled at him, imagined those warm eyes heating until their whites curdled and the boy boiled himself blind, and Thomas returned his gaze to his cauldron as though his professor's thoughts had already bled fearfully into his mind.

                Severus glanced at Malfoy, and subsequently glimpsed Gwendolyn on the periphery of his vision. Both were immersed in their work, the former scribbling down notes on the potion's progress while the latter minced up sticky aloe leaves. For a moment, they became children when she flicked one of the pieces at the blond boy's nose, and he glared at her before marking her pale hand with a line of ink from his quill. But then it was gone, whisked away by some ethereal wind, and the zombies returned, fallen angel and wraithlike doll.

                 He rose to sweep through the rows of students, grade book in hand and eyes meticulously combing over their toiling as he leisurely surveyed the Gryffindor side of the room. He deducted five points from both Patil and Brown for attempting to surreptitiously read the latest issue of _Witch Weekly beneath their table as they worked before making his way over to his Slytherins. There seemed to be an almost tangible line between the two Houses, as though the serpents had eclipsed the sun that shone so brightly down on the lions with storm clouds comprised of jaggedly cut dungeon stone, upholding the tradition of cultivating this Land of Phantoms within which so many of their forefathers had trod. _

                Crabbe and Goyle's potion was surprisingly adequate, and he did stress the word when he informed them of that. Parkinson and Zabini's was actually coming along better than normal, while Moon, Hornby and Nott's, in contrast, appeared to be a bit behind schedule. Cross and Malfoy's, flawless as always, though he didn't comment on its dear perfection as he normally would. Malfoy frowned at this new lack of praise, then automatically shot a glare over at Potter and Weasley, who were, of course, noting this development with pleased looks when the Potions master's back was turned as he strode back toward the front of the classroom.

                The female half of the Potions partnership was also smiling inwardly. A deviation from routine meant that the professor's mind was indeed fraught with memories of recent events, and while she had harboured no doubt of that before, each small piece of evidence was nonetheless gratifying.

                She was still considering that petite satisfaction well after the class let out. It began to dissolve only when the final bell rang at the end of the day, when she descended down the ladder that led from the Divination classroom into the halls. She'd learned that Filch could usually be found near the Great Hall after classes were over – probably on the lookout for students committing the most minor offences under the influence of after-school freedom – and today was no different. The sight of his ugly face reminded her that she still had a week of detention left, and as none of them had thus far been with her darling Death, her mood began to sour. Afternoons and evenings had become so exceedingly tedious over the last six-and-one-half days.

                Her outlet of dance had been stolen from her, not because of pain, but because her healing feet refused to perform properly until she sanctioned their need for rest. Robbed of that and denied her one desire, then forced into monotonous physical labour by a different professor each day, it was not long before her disposition turned understandably irate. 

It was two days until the Slytherin-Gryffindor Quidditch match, and Madam Hooch was slated to oversee detention hall that day. Gwendolyn would not be working alone – Professor Sinistra had indeed made good on her pre-Christmas promise to Rufus Montague, though he hadn't received it until his own Astronomy class the night before.

                Hooch led them out to the Quidditch pitch, and Montague had to fight to contain a whoop of joy when she told them that they would be testing the Bludgers and the Snitch to make sure they were all in working order for the upcoming match. The entire Slytherin team had been practicing like mad the last week, booking the pitch for four out of seven days to be certain they were at their very best against Gryffindor, and to the Chaser, this was just another chance to hone his skills.

                The only thing he had to complain about was that they would be using the same brooms as the first-years did for flying lessons – Shooting Stars that were quite possibly older than Madam Hooch herself, who had in her possession a Firebolt which Montague eyed jealously. Both students mounted their broomsticks, were given a Beater club each, rose about thirty feet in the air, and Hooch released the Bludgers. The twin balls immediately arched for the two Slytherins. Montague sent his spiralling toward one of the goal hoops, and Gwendolyn ducked hers, then hit it on its rebound curve in the boy's direction. Her whole arm tingled uncomfortably with the force of the blow, and she wondered how Derrick's and Bole's shoulders hadn't permanently dislodged from their sockets after years of doing this nigh-daily. She was definitely _not meant to play this game. Too light of a frame for a Chaser, she'd be knocked off her broom in a split-second. Not strong enough to be a Beater, and slightly nearsighted – not enough to warrant a need for spectacles, but enough to ensure she wouldn't stand a chance against the tiny Golden Snitch._

                Montague returned the Bludger to her with a powerful whack, and she smacked it toward their warden for the day, who was by now on her broom and flying near them, holding a small gold ball in one hand and a Beater club in the other. She hit the thing expertly toward Montague, who had just sent his along the east end of the pitch.

                "You two mind the Bludgers for a bit – I'm going to test the Snitch," she called out, then let go of the aforementioned ball and gave it a thirty second head start before zipping after it.

                "Bloody hell," Montague sighed, looking impressed as he watched Hooch fly. "If only Malfoy had eyes like those."

                "Yellow?" Gwendolyn asked as she dodged a Bludger, which Montague sent hurling toward the Gryffindor stands.

                "Hawk's eyes. She was a Seeker for Scotland International a few years back."

                "But aren't they...well...awful?"

                "_Now they are, yeah, but when she was on the team, they won the World Cup three years in a row. One of the best Seekers of the century, she is. Duck."_

                Gwendolyn did, and he knocked the second Bludger away over her head.

                "I hate this game," she muttered. Montague looked mortally wounded.

                "Hey now, keep in mind who you're talking to!"

                "Fine. I hate _playing this game."_

                "That's better. What sort of games _do you like to play, anyway? You don't play Quidditch, I'm guessing you were never one for Quodpot, you never join in for exploding snap or Gobstones..."_

                "I never really saw the fun in having things explode or spit in your face when you lost. I prefer games that don't insult me."

                "For instance...?"

                "For instance, chess. Lots of little pieces running around killing each other. What's not to love?"

                Montague's eyebrows raised, and he gave a nod of concession just as Hooch returned, Snitch in hand.

                "All right, everything seems to be in order. On the ground with the both of you, and wrangle the Bludgers back into the box," she ordered, and the pair began to descend. "On second thought—" she stopped them, frowning a bit, "—Montague, _you get the Bludgers. I fear Cross might break if made to contend with one of them."_

                He let out a laboured sigh, and Gwendolyn gave him a mocking smirk. Having a rail-thin figure did have its advantages.

                Their next task, unfortunately, was not one her figure would exempt her from doing – to clean the broom shed just beyond the pitch, which was something like being assigned to tidy up a horse stable sans the smell and equine droppings. Twigs shed from the old Shooting Stars like Morgaine shed fur, and the whole floor was littered with them, not to mention the dust and cobwebs that covered everything like musty grey sheets. It took two hours to get the place spotless between the two of them, and they staggered into the Great Hall at dinner looking as though they'd just tumbled out of a soot-stuffed flue. Malfoy had seen fit to make various remarks with varying contexts of the word 'dirty' and what he presumed they were _really doing in the shed when Hooch's back was turned._

                "Oh, yeah," Montague snorted. "We were shagging like rabbits at the speed of light."

                "Going at it fast as a hummingbird's wings. Hooch was staring at us the whole time and was completely oblivious," Gwendolyn nodded.

                "See?" Malfoy said accusingly. "You even admit it."

                "Prisoners of tawdry teen lust are we."

                At this, Nott smirked. "In your dreams, Rufus."

                "Well, actually no. But I've heard a thing or two about _your dreams, Mr. Nott, you wicked boy."_

                "_Do fuck off, Montague."_

                Montague leaned back to glance toward the front of the table. "Oi, Snoad," he called out, "fancy a shag?"

                Hilary Snoad threw back an automatic "Oi, Montague, fancy being buggered with a broomstick?" before continuing on with her rather one-sided conversation with Adrian Pucey.

                Montague shrugged at Nott. "I tried."

                Gwendolyn had stopped listening after Nott's first intrusion into the banter, and was now poking solemnly at the potatoes on her plate. Professor Snape was again missing from the meal – an oddity for once, because he usually attended dinner even after skipping the first two repasts, she speculated to keep the other teachers from assuming too much from his absences. He would most likely be found in his office, or perhaps in his private chambers. She contemplated briefly going to see him to enquire about his recent outward disregard of her existence, but decided against it. It would be distastefully obvious of her were she to seek him out without an innocuous motive, especially with the steady stream of Slytherins heading from the Great Hall back down to the dormitories. That, and she had no idea where his room would be, if he was indeed there, and in a place like Hogwarts, it was pointless to go looking for a place that did not wish to be found.

                _I will be patient for this, she told herself, __for at least a little while longer. Until I find my moment. Then, if he moves, I strike. She paused, took an idle nibble of carrot, and could not hold back a tiny smirk. __And__ if he doesn't...I'll strike nevertheless._

~*~

                Thursday came and went like a drowsy sigh, yawning itself laboriously into Friday and then spluttering as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over its sleepy head. Lessons were tense and fidgety, and the squirming of anxious students was only made worse by their professors, who refused to cut them so much as a crumb of slack. Where their wards were overcome with eagerness at the Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch match scheduled for that day, the teachers themselves seems almost hell-bent on stalling it for as long as possible, as the rivalry between the two Houses had grown uglier as of late. It did make sense – inviting such a match a scant three weeks after Voldemort's grand gesture of supremacy was nearly as ludicrous as inviting the Dark Lord himself up to the headmaster's office for a spot of tea.

                It was days like these that Gwendolyn questioned her choice in acquaintances. Whilst befriending over half of the Slytherin Quidditch team was undoubtedly good for one's image, it also brought about an inescapable deterioration in conversation topics. She had heard of nothing but the approaching match for the last nine hours, and was almost happy that she wouldn't be able to attend it by the time the final bell rang. Even Filch's bitter grumblings were a pleasant switch from the endless blether of Quaffles and feints and new fouls to test against Hooch's keen eyes. The anti-Gryffindor spirit had been nicely infectious, but for goodness' sake, it _was just a game. Her mind went to Sinistra – the Astronomy professor would probably be hoarse-voiced well into next week, if her outbursts at the match against Ravenclaw could be considered 'mild'._

                Elation eluded her until she realised where Filch was leading her amidst the swarms of students making their way out to the Quidditch pitch – into the dungeons.

                "Mr. Filch?" she ventured, and received a gruff "What?" in reply. "Who is seeing over detention hall today?"

                "Professor Snape," the caretaker muttered, none too happy about the interruption of his blessed petulance. Gwendolyn, needless to say, was quite the opposite, but maintained her usual visage of indifference as they sank down into the dark bowels of the castle.

                Filch left her at the door of the Potions classroom, and it was with a trembling hand that she opened the door and stepped inside.

                This was a mistake.

Severus knew that much even before she appeared in the threshold. One mistake adding to many, all of which he had painstakingly helped to craft with blind eyes that still refused to see the chain reaction that they had set into motion. _Take no notice of that which consumes your thoughts. Contradiction. Like a frail child cowering beneath the covers as if the monsters would disappear as long as he did not look at them, though he could hear their skulking approach, their ravenous growls growing ever closer through the chrysalis of blanket and cold sweat-soaked sheets._

                His Alice crept through the door and into the garden, empty bottle marked 'Drink me' clutched in her bony white hand and face drawn as though disappointed that the bottle had not also been marked 'poison'. She had wanted bitter almonds skipping along her tongue, and had been saddened with the cordial taste of the liquid, and so she had come here, to his deadly apothecary, in hopes of rectifying the situation. Potions master. Poison master. Ice-blue lips and ribbons of marzipan tied 'round her throat.

                "Sit down," he ordered, and she dropped into the chair nearest to his desk like a marionette whose strings had been snapped. He had made a puppet once, named Patricia Prewett; her bones had been limp after her tendons had been severed, and Severus had made her dance. Puppet master.

                He stood, went over to one of the cabinets lining the walls below the shelves of pickled animal parts, and pulled from it a large tray, a few glass jars, and a thick book, and placed all on the table in front of her.

                Gwendolyn stared at the tray, tilted her head and regarded the pink bag of flesh on top of it with curiosity. A rabbit, freshly dead and bald but for its furry white head, one red eye still half-open and foggy-looking. The book next to it, one on animal anatomy, a black ribbon marking a page near the middle.

                "Harvest its organs," he instructed, his voice an asp sinking its fangs into her ears. She wondered, was this a test? A demonstration to measure her propensity toward morbidity? She would not fail him if it was. She opened the book to its pre-marked page, read over the directives, drank in the pictures and committed them to memory before she picked up the scalpel lying next to the corpse on the tray, and began to cut.

                He returned to his desk and watched her as she worked. Though her hands were shaky as ever, her motions held an almost delicate skill, slicing through the skin of the rabbit in one quick movement, keeping the line smooth and straight. She didn't appear to be at all squeamish about dissecting what was once a cuddly, harmless little creature, nor had he expected her to be. She approached her task with a scientific sort of logic while her hands fluttered this way and that in a tiny dance of their own. Mechanical grace; contradiction.

                Liver first, always the biggest organ, easiest to find and remove. The scalpel slid effortlessly through sinewy ribbons of muscle and soft deposits of fat, and she placed the liver into the largest jar, and twisted on the cap. Stomach next, a damp, empty balloon that would satiate its owner's hunger no longer. Spleen. Kidneys. Each harvested swiftly and methodically under her trance of concentration; she was completely absorbed in this gruesome chore, and he had his suspicions that she was, for once, totally oblivious to his presence. Blood stained her fingers like messy chocolate on the hands of a child. He had known that she would not object to this particular assignment; it suited her, and held her interest, but the thought had not crossed his mind before now that she wasn't merely engrossed with the poor excuse for punishment – she was at play with it.

                The comprehension of that jarred him, and at the same moment her tremulous hands gave a sudden jerk, and his earlier wish was granted. The scalpel engraved a shallow gash parallel to the veins in her left wrist, and before he realised what he was doing, Severus was already standing behind her, gripping her arm tightly above the wound, slowing the blood flow. She jumped at his initial touch, turned to face him. His stare did not leave her wrist, ink-black eyes focused on steadily pooling crimson-on-white.

                His head screamed at him, _You__ shouldn't be here! while his body remained rooted in its place, riveted by the little off-shoots of red slipping like infinitesimal rivers along the creases in her skin. _

                His grasp on her arm was searing, and she wondered if the feel of it was anything like what he felt when he was called to serve the Flight of Death. Her fingers curled into a tight fist, nails pressing into her palm as the beating of her wicked heart quickened and tried to break free of the ribcage that held it captive. A drop of blood rolled down her skin like a tear, and was caught between his thumb and forefinger.

                The slap was sudden, unexpected, and her cheek stung and grew flushed from the force of it.

                "Idiot girl!" he snarled, releasing her arm and taking a step back, his mind reeling, flashing distortion like a warning strobe; white heat on black ice, screaming head and silent body, her blood on his skin and fuck, he just struck a student...

                No. No, not a strike – an initiation, an invitation, a mistake, deliberate mistake, contradiction – damn it, bless it, both, same thing and he knew she couldn't tell the difference either and he'd done it anyway.

                "I'm not an idiot." Her first defiance of him, quiet but not timid, not fearful, and it sickened him until he was obliged to hit her again. Her head snapped to one side, then lolled forward as though he had stolen the bones from her neck with the blow. Corpse-like eyes opened slowly, willing the dead weight of eyelids up to lock onto his gaze, and she smiled.

                He had never seen her smile before, not really – smirks, yes, tiny twists of lips on a closed mouth, but those weren't like this, weren't like this at all. Teeth bared in a half-snarl, and he noticed they were slightly crooked, pointed canines pushed out just enough so that their sharpness had never been worn down by her bottom teeth, just enough to give them the appearance of little fangs.

                She lashed out at him like a snake, her chair tumbling to the floor as she shoved him back against the table behind them and claimed his mouth for the third time, forcing it open through the sheer intensity of her assault and dragging those little fangs along his tongue. His right hand gripped her throat, his left reaching around behind her, taking hold of that damnable braid and wrenching it down, tearing her mouth from his.

                Severus stared down into her pretty face. Shadows played beneath her eyes, and in the glittering candlelight of the dank room they possessed an almost demonic glow. He knew then that she would not allow him to escape this encounter unscarred. He had been dancing with this devil for far too long, and he yearned to be burned just as badly as she wanted to burn him.

                _You are insane, the voice hissed, an empty, echoing inflection that rattled in his skull._

                "Yes," he answered it, his voice a whisper. There was a quizzical flash in the girl's eyes, and he threw her away.

                Gwendolyn crashed into the cabinets roughly, and twisted herself around scarcely fast enough to see him advancing upon her again. The back of his hand cracked against her right temple. She was so thin, and he was stronger than he looked, and she would have crumpled to the floor had he not caught her, dragged her back up for a second bruising kiss. Her sticky hands rose to his face, her nails biting into the sharp protrusions of his cheekbones as he went to her braid again, ripping off the silver clasp that held it in place and untwisting the strands until he could tangle his fingers in the waves that grazed the middle of her back.

                The little fangs pierced his tongue, and she licked the coppery tang from his mouth with a crushing thirst. Soothing sting. Contradiction. Lunacy. His mind folded in on itself like wrecked house of cards, and he adored its sweet release as it fell into bubbling hatred.

                _I have him, Gwendolyn's mind ricocheted with the knowledge like a stray bullet that never lost its deadly speed. Possessed; possession. Contradiction. Sweetmeat psychosis and candy-coated covetings, rich desire, nearly nauseating in its decadence. The sound of fabric being shredded resonated in her ears, and his hands were burning her body, and his mouth was on her throat and his teeth were in her flesh. The pain of it was red before her eyes, and she basked in it as though it were a blood-moon and she was starbathing._

                Bent over the desk and she was writhing beneath him, choking on her tongue with the effort to keep from screaming, fingers worming their way beneath his robes and claws painting lesions on his back, his shoulders, his chest. One leg wrapped around his waist, heel of her boot digging into his spine, pressing him against her, coaxing him to commit this dear depravity that he so despised, that she could feel his wretched desire for, rigid against her thigh. Hand still stained with rabbit's blood clasped around his neck, and he knew that she would take it from him if he refused to give, to succumb to this final surrendering of his sanity.

                "Severus." A prayer, a blaspheme. A warning.

                A submission.

                Muttered sacrilegious chants and spat-out profanities chorused from the recesses of filthy mouths, spilled over corrupt lips as he at last gave in, as his body gave out, shuddering ragged curses against her skin, the pallid satin over veins of blue lace now discoloured with the purpling stains of his touch.

                He wrenched his body away from hers and sagged against the wall, still trembling in the aftermath of the repulsive act he had just played party to. Gwendolyn shivered at the sudden absence of his heat, her breath coming in rapid little gasps. She drew herself up, looked down. The fastenings of her robes had been torn off, and the neck of her sweater had been stretched so severely it hung off her slender shoulders, both of which were marred with the red brandings of his teeth.

                The stone wall felt warm in comparison to the chill within his bones. The pieces of his shattered mind glinted at him in short glimmers, and the chaos of it left him feeling ill. Lingering bittersweet peppermint clashed against the acid bile taste in the back of his throat, and he swallowed down the urge to gag. His gaze flickered over to her, sitting on the table top with her skirt still pushed up, swinging bare, pale legs and black-booted feet like a goddamn _child and staring at him with a blank satisfaction rippling over her features and her hair in tangled kinks and his stomach gave a sickening twist at the sight of it._

                "Get out," he growled, hoarse-voiced and harsh, and the little brat had the audacity to shake her head at him.

                "Oh, no," she murmured, corpse-eyes widening as an innocent smile curved around those tiny fangs. "It's much too late for that, dear Professor. Much too late by far."

                He fixed on her a dangerous scowl, his hands clenching into fists at his sides until they shook – not with anger. Nothing so simple as that. She was right, he knew, and that wasn't an uncomplicated thing in the least.

                No, not in the least. Severus had a feeling nothing would ever be so simple again.


	13. Cadaver Corollaries

My review count is a triple-digit number. The only thing I can think of to say is "Mighty fuck!" Oh, and "Thank you!" ;) Many, many thank you!s to you wonderful lot who've seen fit to nudge that number up there. All of your comments are greatly appreciated. Except for yours. Yeah, you, the guy in the third row. Yeah. Blow me.

Mostly Gwendolyn and Slytherins in this chapter, mostly Snape (and much more plot, I assure you) in the next.

**Part 13 – Cadaver Corollaries**

                Ten minutes. Ten minutes and her body refused to let go of the phantom burns left by his hands, his mouth. Ten minutes since she had spoken to him. Ten minutes, and they had been silent.

                _I have him, the words still echoed in her head. __I have him; he is mine. This Death is mine._

                His face was no longer flushed from his exertions, and the faintest of bruises from her fingertips took the place of that impassioned blush, blending with the shadows of the hollows of his cheeks. He had not moved from his place against the wall, the long, skeletal fingers of his left hand gripping it as though he was afraid of letting go, afraid of falling. Could he not see that he was already broken on the ground? Or perhaps he would not see...

                "Oh, what internal conflict is this?" she pondered aloud. "What are you fighting, Severus? What is it you believe you can still undo?"

                The words could have come from his own mind. In truth, they were there already, and he wondered if she hadn't read them off the surface of his thoughts.

                _You fucked her, the voice groaned as if weary of stating the obvious so many times in recent days. __Why grope for some semblance of resistance? You have already given in. You tasted the apple, and the world came crashing down around you, and it gave you pleasure. You fucked her. You cannot deny that you enjoyed it, nor can you claim it will never happen again. _

                He flinched suddenly, a sharp jerk of his head with his eyes tightly closed.

                _Oh, won't it?__ How long do you think you will be able to keep yourself from taking another bittersweet bite? How long until the need to feel the cracking flesh between your teeth becomes so unbearable you cannot stand it? You took what you wanted, Severus, and you will take it again. You hate her too much to not hurt her again, want her too much to not allow her to do the same to you. You know quite well that that sickness in your gut has nothing to do with remorse. You have never indulged shame before, and you are not about to begin to now._

                "Severus?"

                _She calls for you – already she is urging you back to her. One cannot have a lapse in sanity if sanity eluded them to begin with. Look at her. Look. The marks on her body – your marks. The skin beneath her nails – your skin. Your pleasure. Your pain. Contradiction. Disallowing yourself to embrace this madness only serves to illustrate it. Denial is for fools like Cornelius Fudge. You are mad, but you are no fool. Look at her._

                He raised his gaze, regarded her with an odium he reserved for a precious few. Her image swirled in sickly greys, faded reds and vivid greens; she tilted her head at him curiously as if to ask, "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?" and the impulse to hit her gripped him again. He clenched the hand not clutching the wall into a fist, but did not move.

                _Ah, but Snape, the voiced sighed at her silent question,__ you are already dancing. You have been for quite some time now. _

_Look at her. She will drink your ache, and you will devour hers. She is yours to do with what you wish, as you are hers. Take it, Severus. Ravage her again amidst the rubble of your mind. The White Rabbit won't tell a soul, and she's so beautiful when she's hurting, and when she's hurting you. Take it, Severus. Take it again. Take her again._

                "Gwendolyn..." The name tasted sour in his mouth; he had never before spoken it out loud. "...come here." The order was soft, deceptively so, and it sliced through the air like small razor of malice. She complied, of course; where others would have been wise to maintain suspicion of his intentions, she was eager for whatever cruelty he promised in the hiss behind his teeth. He straightened as she approached, took a step away from the wall and when she was standing in front of him, ran a finger deftly, delicately over the angry red abrasion on her right shoulder. His mouth had not drawn blood. The finger left her shoulder, and his hand brushed her cheek lightly before entangling itself in her hair. The fanged smile returned. Fragile; feral. His mouth had not drawn blood last time. This time, he decided, would be different.

~*~

                It was well past dusk when she left the Potions classroom, braid securely in place, robes repaired and draping smoothly over her body. Though he was not one for 'foolish wand waving', Severus Snape had proven to be quite adept at Charms, if a little unused to the benign sort helpful in everyday life. Beneath the robes, her skin looked nowhere near as flawless. The licking of the wounds had been the extent of their cleaning, and Gwendolyn had a feeling that that was no bout of absentmindedness.

                _Let them fester, she mused to herself. __Let them scar. I can think of no more beautiful mark._

                A sense of triumph floated around her as she skipped down the dungeon corridor, two small leaps with her right foot leading, two small leaps with her left. She could hear the other students returning from the Quidditch match above her, and wondered if her fellow Slytherins also had a victory to enjoy.

                "_Carpe noctem," she told the wall. The entrance to the serpents' common room slid open, and she did a little pirouette before stepping inside. Morgaine glanced up from where she had been dozing in one of the high-backed chairs near the fireplace, a sceptical look on her furry black face at her master's jubilant mood. Gwendolyn scooped the feline up in her arms, spinning around a few times before depositing the bemused animal on one of the sofas and flopping down next to it. The cat prodded her with a cold wet nose, nudging her hand as if to say "Well? What is it this time? You're usually gushing by now."_

                "No words, sweet Morgaine," Gwendolyn replied, scratching the familiar's neck affectionately. "I am, for once, without speech."

                Morgaine purred, green eyes narrowing into contented slits in a "were that but true" sort of way.

                The entrance opened again with the quiet scraping of stone-against-stone, and Blaise Zabini slipped inside, looking apathetic as ever. Gwendolyn arched a quizzical eyebrow at her as she slouched into the chair Morgaine had recently vacated. "We won," she said, and what she lacked in excitement, the other members of their House were sure to make up for. "Potter got the Snitch, but we'd already run them through." The redhead couldn't stifle and proud smirk. "One-seventy to one-sixty, and the only goal they scored was off Nott's foul on that Johnson girl. Slytherin hasn't played that well against Gryffindor in over ten years – you should've been there."

                "Mm. I managed to find amusement in other places," Gwendolyn smiled wanly.

                "I thought Sinistra's head was going to explode. She nearly fell out of the stands – Crabbe had to grab her by the back of her cloak to keep her from trying to fly without a broomstick, so you can expect to have detention with him tomorrow. I've a feeling House Slytherin isn't going be sleeping until at least tomorrow afternoon, unless they all drop where they're standing from exhaustion. Montague looked like he about to cry, he was so damn happy. And I think Uther and Butch are already in the kitchens informing the House Elves of the party."

                "Ooh, wonderful. It looks like everyone's got something to celebrate."

                Blaise looked as though she wanted to ask what it was that Gwendolyn was so cheery about, but the door opened again before she could speak, and a group of thirty or so rowdy, still-shouting Slytherins flooded inside. Morgaine, sensing the imminent danger of being either stepped or sat on, quickly scurried down to the dormitories. Gwendolyn followed her example. "Let me know when the team arrives?" Blaise nodded, and she descended down into the depths of the dungeons.

                Morgaine was waiting at the door, and scurried inside before her master as though it were a race. Gwendolyn shut the door firmly behind her and went to her trunk to retrieve her velvet-bound diary from her trunk. After getting situated comfortably on her bed, she drew the curtains around her for added privacy and began to write by wandlight.

                _January 15th_

_7:34 p.m.___

_                O, what song is this, so sweetly heard amidst the dungeon din, like children at play, at plague. Hang a ring of roses, pocket full of posies and shrieking rats, and the sense of it all is not...not meant to be known, as I can't myself comprehend the emotions that course through my veins at this moment. But you understand; you always understand. In these blessed hours past have you become dearer to me than ever, and you know, you know. And yet I cannot ask of you the solitary question that vexes my thoughts, for I fear mere ink and flame will not do it justice, will not convey its true severity. Give me four and twenty hours, sweet Death, four and twenty hours with which to craft my query, and I pray you respond in a manner most vulgar, most maliciously delicious so that I may know your true feelings on the matter. It was with a heavy heart that I bade you good-night tonight, and my head is still ringing with that sweet sorrow that I may say good-night 'til it be morrow, for Mr. Montague is expecting me at our House festivity tonight, and it would not do for me to be the bearer of disappointment to Sir Romeo and his friends. Bonsoir, mon amour. Jusqu'à la prochaine fois. ¹_

                She ran a thumbnail along the page near the binding, and neatly tore it out before heading into the bathroom connected to the dormitory. She kissed the parchment once before allowing it to drop into the sink nearest to the door and set it alight with a spark from her wand. It blackened quickly, curling in on itself until nothing remained but a small scrap of ash, which she washed down the drain.

                "Gwendolyn?" Blaise called from the dorm. "The team is here."

                "By and by I come," Gwendolyn replied, extinguishing the light of her wand and making her way back to the common room. The entire House, some two-hundred-fifty-odd students, had crammed themselves in every available space, crowding sofas, chairs and tables so that there was barely enough room to move. Hilary Snoad had brought up her wireless radio from her own dormitory, and had enchanted it so that its meagre sound capabilities resonated throughout the room. The Weird Sisters were in the middle of belting out something about leechwives when Casca Warrington spotted the fifth-year girl across the room and flagged her over.

                "Gwendolyn, my little displaced American, I'm going to kill you for missing that match," he said, grinning from ear to ear. "Gods, it was fantastic!"

                She smiled genially, finding Nott's lap to be as decent a place to sit as any. He didn't seem to mind it in the least, and rested his chin on her still-sore shoulder. Malfoy, in a similar if more uncouth position with Pansy, shot her a Look, which she thoroughly ignored. "Congratulations, boys."

                "Congratulations?" Montague looked aghast. "That's it? Oh, I don't think so." He stood and leapt atop the low table in front of the sofa the team was occupying, took out his wand and twirled it dramatically between his fingers. "We are deserving of far higher praise than a mere 'congratulations'. We are the Slytherin sovereigns, the monarchy of the match, the un-quelled Quidditch-questing conquerors!"

                "The almighty advocators of excessive alliteration!" Casca chimed in over the raucous applause, and Rufus gave him an slippery smirk.

                "But of course, Mr. Warrington. We are the indomitable, the invincible! Detain us with detention—" he gestured at Gwendolyn, "—we will snub your authoritative scorn! Exhaust us with exams – we will prevail, we will _pass! Throw at us every conceivable obstacle—"_

                "N.E.W.T.s!" a seventh-year called out.

                "Curfew!" came another shout.

                "Trelawney!" a third-year girl exclaimed, resulting in the giggling of those in the surrounding area.

                "Yes!" Montague continued. "N.E.W.T.s pose no threat! Curfew is a load of crap! Trelawney is – a load of crap! Give us your Trelawneys, your Filches, your _Gryffindors—" collective booing echoed throughout the room, "we will crush their crystal balls, stuff Dungbombs down their trousers, turn their scarlet and gold into blood and piss! We are snakes, hear us hiss! We will not be defeated! We are Slytherins, and on this day, we are gods!" The students all erupted in cheers loud enough to drown out thought as Montague took a deep bow before jumping off the table and back to his place on the sofa. Nott applauded for Gwendolyn, his hands on her wrists as she whistled excitedly._

                "Well?" she asked him once the noise had dissipated and smaller groups were engaged in their own conversations. "What are you waiting for? I want a play-by-play of everything."

                By now, dinner had appeared as a buffet on every table in the room – entrees in front of the sofas, desserts on the chessboards, huge bowls of juice everywhere in between.

                "Where to begin..." he trailed off, taking a drink of pumpkin juice.

                "'eh Bea'ahs!" Montague yelped around a mouthful of mash.

                "The Beaters. Our distinguished Mr. Derrick and Mr. Bole managed not only to block ninety-nine percent of the Bludgers aimed at their teammates – namely, us – but also to knock the Gryffindor Keeper unconscious with one fell swipe of their clubs. Ne'er was a more synchronised play executed – they managed to bash him with Bludgers simultaneously on both sides of his head."

                At the other end of the sofa, Malfoy nodded, grinning smugly. "Weasel went down like a sack of shit. Wouldn't be surprised if he's out for at least a week. And his brothers? They were more pissed than Hagrid in drag on Ladies' Night at the Leaky Cauldron."

                "That they were," Warrington spoke up after swallowing down a bite of roast beef. "Brassed off, yes, but any match for the three best Chasers in all of Hogwarts? Pish-tosh." He buffed his nails on his robes and admired them, the epitome of egotistical nonchalance. "Our Nott here even managed to get that Johnson bint out of most of the game with a broken ankle. Pulled an Angel of Death and flipped her right off her broom. She must've fallen fifty feet or more."

                "Angel of Death?"

                "Quidditch foul," Montague explained, his mouth now free from the hindrance of food. "It's when you come down from above, grab hold of another player's bristles and swing them backward so that they get caught in a spin. If they're not expecting it, they usual end up ass-up in the dirt, as Johnson so kindly demonstrated."

                "Ooh." Gwendolyn tilted her head back to smirk at Nott. "Well done."

                "Hooch wouldn't agree with you."

                "Hooch is old baggage when it comes to refereeing. All that rubbish about being fair. Hmph. Means to an end, I say."

                "We all say," Warrington pointed out. "That's why we're in Slytherin."

                "And damn proud of it," Malfoy piped up.

                "Hear, hear!" They all clinked their glasses at the impromptu toast, and Gwendolyn shifted so that she was sprawled bodily over the three Chasers, her head on Nott's arm (which had relocated to the armrest), and her feet hanging off of Montague's knees.

                "Is anyone else unnaturally tired for such an early hour?" she drawled, closing her eyes and fighting off a yawn.

                "We just spent three hours engaging in extreme physical activity on broomsticks, Gwendolyn, we're knackered beyond all reason. What's your excuse?"

                "Oh, you think you're the only ones who had to put up with strenuous labour this afternoon? I'll have you know Professor Snape seemed hell-bent on testing my endurance." She chewed on the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. _Euphemisms abound..._

                "Yes, and we all know how gruelling organising potion ingredients and harvesting the organs of small animals can be," Warrington snorted. "Women. So brittle and weak." Gwendolyn's knee made contact with his gut, and he grunted. "Ow. Brittle and weak, but with damn bony knees..."

                "You'd do well to remember that," she snapped, pointedly arching an eyebrow at him. He got her drift quickly and attempted to discreetly cross his legs. Still on Malfoy's lap, Pansy let out a tiny sniff that almost sounded amused. She'd yet to say anything, and Malfoy was idly tracing his fingers along her arm. Surprisingly enough, both of them had been keeping up the deal they'd made regarding their relationship rather well – Pansy had taken down the blatant (and needless) jealousy a notch, and Malfoy had been making a genuine effort to up the dignity of it all. Though Gwendolyn still often had the urge to kick the pug-faced girl in the teeth, the desire to slit her throat had been somewhat lessened, which was probably better for all parties involved.

                The conversation lulled as the boys continued to stuff their faces, and Gwendolyn was content to people-watch for awhile. The Witch Wireless Network had switched from the Weird Girls to a fairly new (and at the same time remarkably old) all-ghost group called the Phantoms of the Opera, and their eerie harmonising combined with a cello, pipe organ and harpsichord backdrop had everyone feeling somewhat lethargic and listless. Nothing much was going on. Moon and Hornby were attempting to chat up a couple of fourth-year girls, Adrian Pucey was off having a victory snog-and-grope with Olivia Vermillion in a dark corner, and Blaise was slipping prudently out of the hidden door and into the dungeon corridors – an odd occurrence, Gwendolyn noted, but not one she cared enough about to investigate.

                Malfoy had retrieved a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans from his sweets stash, and was passing around the more dubiously coloured ones around to those in his immediate vicinity. Nott had a small handful of them himself, and held a speckled pinkish one over Gwendolyn's face. She opened her mouth, and he popped it in.

                "Horseradish," she noted, and he gave her a lopsided grin. At least, it was trying to be a grin – it was a bit difficult when he was grimacing at the flavour of his own bean.

                "Salt."

                "Ew."

                "Quite." He popped another bean into her mouth. She chewed it for a second, then frowned.

                "I think...mushy peas."

                "Burnt toast with mint jelly."

                "Poor Nott. Doomed to a life of bad beans."

                "Alas."

                Gwendolyn patted him consolingly on the shoulder, and he looked nervously pensive for a moment before swallowing and coaching his face into an expression of feigned indifference. "Dance?" he asked, nodding slightly toward the radio. The Phantoms' rather sinister-sounding baritones had evolved into a spine-chilling carnival-esque tune that she especially enjoyed, and so she agreed, for music without dance was, to her, a terrible waste of brilliance. They rose and slithered through the bodies cluttering the room into a small space that left little actual freedom of movement, and he began to lead her in a slow, comfortable waltz, his body a respectable distance from hers. It wasn't long before their clearing grew as people shifted back, some to watch, others to partake of the idea. 

As it always did when she was dancing, Gwendolyn's mind began to wander, away from Nott, away from the common room. It nestled into a murky corner of the dungeons, a place filled with the heady mingling scents of blood and potion and the livid, guttural rasps of pain and passion. She wondered when she would next be permitted to experience such a devilish delight again, for there was no lingering doubt that she would be received into the Potions master's solidarity with far less of a struggle than had previously been between them. In certain respects only, naturally.

He had still been cleaning the wounds on her shoulders with his tongue when she had been twisting her hair back into its usual braid, her blood a metal-sweet nectar in his mouth. When she had finished, he had repaired her robes and kissed her once, biting down on her bottom lip teasingly, ceasing the pressure just before he tore the skin. He broke wordlessly away from her to return to his desk, a strange numbness encircling the room in the wake of the fury that had been exorcised from months' worth of cramped tension between them. They had not spoken to each other since his quiet order to her, preferring to fill the silence with a much more primitive language, and when she had left the classroom he had looked at her, and in that solitary glance there had been a tacit acknowledgement that would have been sorrowful if it hadn't been so very wild.

Black hair, black eyes, black robes, with skin the colour of bones stretched over a skeletal, deathly powerful frame. So many a handsome man are oft compared to the chiselled Adonis; such a name was an insult to Gwendolyn's dear professor, tasteless and overused. Severus Snape was no Adonis – he was Hades, and she was a Persephone thriving in this dungeon Underworld with no care to rise with the spring. Hell is cold in Greek mythology, with the exception of the boiling pits, and the dungeons were more often than not as chilled as the winter out-of-doors. They could be happy in this frozen hell, she decided as the music leisurely withered and wound down to its final notes. They would trade parties for merry funerals, and in attendance would be ghostly guests and phantom friends as they welcomed the newly damned into their world. And if there was ever a pause in good company, they could damn whomever they wished, stealing souls away from bodies in the name of personal entertainment. 

Gwendolyn wondered how on earth people pitied the dead; it seemed to her they should covet death, and those of ambition would sooner achieve it than others. She used herself as an example – she had seen Death, wanted him, desired him, and look at all she had claimed, all she had attained. He was hers now, and she marvelled that such an accomplishment might not be envied by others. _The living are so fickle._

                The music ended in favour of an advertisement for Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, and she stepped abruptly away from Nott, who looked somewhat confused at her sudden aversion of him. She didn't give him time to ask about it before starting for her dormitory, descending quickly down the stairwell to the second level.

                "Damn, Nott, what'd you do, try to cop a feel on her?" Montague snickered as the other Chaser returned to the sofa in a half-daze.

                "Get buggered, Rufus," Nott snapped.

                "Ooh," Warrington hissed, "looks like someone's ego's acquired a bit of a bruise."

                "Honestly, Nott, how can you ever expect to get the girl if you don't grow some balls and tell her outright that you want her?"

                Nott rolled his eyes. "This coming from someone whose relationship with Snoad's broomstick is closer than his relationship with Snoad herself."

                "Hey, at least she knows I'm up for it – no pun intended – if she is."

                "And that approach has gotten you _so far with her. Thanks, but I'll stick to my subtleties."_

                Montague sighed. "You're digging your own grave, Tyler m'boy. Digging your own grave. Why do you like her so much, anyway?"

                "Shut up."

                "No, seriously. I mean, she's pretty and all, but she's..."

                "Bloody weird?" Malfoy offered.

                "Well, yes, but that's not what I'm searching for. Gwendolyn's..."

                "Gwendolyn," Warrington supplied.

                "Precisely. She's not like other girls."

                Nott shrugged pensively. "Maybe that's part of her appeal."

                "I guess so..." Montague trailed off, sounding unconvinced. "She's just so...sisterly."

                "Nothing like my sister," Warrington sneered. "Thank the gods."

                "Your sister's ten, Casca," said Malfoy. "Give her time to grow into her bloody weirdness."

                Warrington snorted cynically. "Somehow, I highly doubt she'll end up anything like our American cohort. Which reminds me – has anyone else noticed she's lost her accent?"

                "She dropped that not a week into moving here," Malfoy sniffed. "Are you suddenly selectively deaf?"

                "Quite possibly. Why _did she run off, Nott?"_

                "I don't—" Casca didn't let him finish.

                "Then what's stopping you from finding out? Go and see if she's all right or whatever concerned bollocks you subtle types favour. Go on." Nott didn't move, and scowled dubiously at his expectant-looking teammates. "_Go." Swearing under his breath, the fifth-year Chaser stood and made his way toward the girls' dormitories. He only got to the first level before he realised that he didn't know which one was hers. Not wanting to give the others any more material to work with as far as poking fun at him went, he did the only logical thing – sat down on his ass and waited to see if she would emerge. If she didn't...well, at least he'd be down there long enough to come up with some sort of lame excuse, providing the area remained girl-free for awhile._

                He was in luck. Not two minutes later, he heard light footsteps coming up the stairwell at the end of the short hallway he was stationed at, and a hastily-moving Gwendolyn came into view. She paused once she caught sight of him, her eyes darting around impatiently. He couldn't help but feel a little intrusive.

                "Yes?" she asked him, drumming the fingers of her right hand against her palm as if fighting the urge to grab for her wand.

                "Um...are you okay?" he mumbled, trying to ignore the yells of 'stupid git' resonating in his head. "You just took off so quickly, and—"

                "I'm fine, thank you," she said quickly. "Is that all?"

                "Well, yeah, but—" She didn't wait for him to complete his sentence, brushing past him without a second glance. "Hey, wait! Where are you going?"

                She didn't slow down, and he fell into step next to her as they ascended to the common room.

                "For a walk."

                "D'you mind if I tag along?"

                Gwendolyn stopped so rapidly that he had to backtrack a couple of steps to be on equal footing with her. She sighed at him resignedly, a look of exasperation coming over her features. "Yes. I do mind."

                Nott frowned, looking almost hurt. "Are you angry with me? Because I didn't mean—"

                "No, Tyler, I'm not angry with you. I'm just..." another sigh, "I need to get some fresh air. Alone. All right?"

                He shifted slightly on his feet like a child being scolded, and averted his eyes from hers to the floor. "All right."

                She proceeded up the stairs, and he waited a few moments before following. She was already out the door by the time he slouched back onto the sofa, where he was received by disparaging looks from Malfoy and Warrington, and badly stifled sniggering from Montague.

                "I hate you all," he groused. Montague lost it and laughed out loud at his friend's disappointment.

                The chill of the dungeon corridors hit Gwendolyn like a bracing wave, and she was grateful to be rid of the oppressive heat of the common room that the crowding of bodies had produced. She'd felt smothered dancing with Nott, though he was a gentlemanly boy and made no attempts to fumble about her person. Dancing with him felt wrong somehow, and she was struck with a sudden need for solitude. She would have liked to seek out Professor Snape and undo whatever erroneous residue Nott's touch had left on her body, but she was not thoughtless enough to take such a risk, not when the castle was plumped with conscious students and faculty, some of which were still bound to be roaming the halls after dinner. It was possible he was in the Great Hall himself – no doubt he would wish now more than ever to keep up an appearance of normalcy. How very tedious such an act could be. Gwendolyn was certainly no stranger to it.

                She moved nimbly up staircases and along the edges of halls, her eyes on the lookout for passers-by. A lone Slytherin student wandering the school when the rest of her House was in the dungeons celebrating something as important as a Quidditch victory was not likely to appear inconspicuous, especially if she came across any ego-punctured Gryffindors. Luckily, she only had to duck behind a suit of armour once to avoid a handful of Ravenclaws presumably heading up to their common room, and again behind a bust of Uric the Oddball that was resting on a fairly large block of stone to evade a forlorn-looking Professor McGonagall. The bust eyed her warily, but said nothing as the Transfigurations teacher passed. The coast was clear the remainder of the way to the storage room, which she had dubbed her Ballroom of Bereavement. Feet still healing or not, she simply _had to dance tonight, for if she did not she feared she might scream her throat ragged. She would force them to comply, if need be. Enchant her toe-shoes like the girl in that story her father had read to her one night before bed when she had been quite small, the one about the girl with the charmed shoes who couldn't stop dancing until a man was obliged to cut off her feet._

                Gwendolyn had enjoyed that story.

~*~

                It was some two hours later that she emerged. Though her feet were not bleeding this time, they cramped terribly with every step that she took. She had been careless, curling her toes under while on pointe in an attempt to save them from any further damage, and was now enduring a constant seizing ache in her arches that was far too infuriating in its spasms to be very pleasant. Her walk from the storage room to the dungeons went slowly, but it wasn't until she reached the staircase that led from the third floor to the second that she stopped altogether.

                About midway down the staircase, clad in blue and white pinstriped pyjamas and holding a new, obese-looking, brownish-green splodge of warts stood one Neville Longbottom, a helpless expression on his face and his left foot ankle-deep and stuck in that particular staircase's trick step. Gwendolyn had nearly reached him when he noticed her, looking as though he couldn't decide whether to be relieved that someone had stumbled across him or to literally relieve himself in fright at the someone it happened to be. This held a promise of fun.

                "Silly boy," she murmured, floating down until she was standing two steps above him. Longbottom's eyes widened in what might have been hope.

                "Er...I got stuck..." he explained.

                "I daresay that's rather obvious."

                "Will you help me?"

                Gwendolyn's gaze shifted left, and she tilted her head contemplatively for a few seconds before answering, "No." He was about to start begging, of that much she was sure, but she silenced him before he had a chance to begin with words of her own. "How did you manage to get yourself into this little predicament?" she asked, sitting down on the steps and resting her chin on folded hands with her elbows propped up on her thighs.

                Longbottom seemed rather befuddled, but figured it best to humour a Slytherin who had him at such a disadvantage, especially one with a reputation as morbid as Gwendolyn's. "Well...I was getting ready to g-go to bed," he stammered, "and I noticed that I'd misplaced Ben again, and I was so worried he'd end up like...like Trevor – my grandmother would kill me if that happened –  I backtracked my steps, trying to find him – and I did; I just forgot about this stupid step..."

                "How very clever of you," she mused, sounding rather bored. "Oh, I don't believe we've ever been formally introduced. Gwendolyn Cross." She held out her hand, but whisked it away just as he was about to shake it.

                "Neville Longbottom."

                "Longbottom...Longbottom...that's a very familiar name you have there."

                "It – it is?"

                "Oh yes. I have the distinct feeling I've heard it somewhere before."

                "Well...Professor Snape says it a lot in class. Maybe if you said it in a disgusted tone of voice it might click?"

                "No, that's definitely not it. Longbottom..." Her mouth curled into a wicked smirk, like a cat who'd just found a mouse in a trap. "Oh, _now I remember," she drawled lazily. "Of course. Your parents are Frank and Edwina, are they not?"_

                The round-faced boy blanched, turned positively stark-white, and Gwendolyn's smirk widened into the feral smile that had so enticed the Potions master earlier that evening. Now, it was anything but arousing to the young Gryffindor ensnared in front of her.

                "Or should I say 'were'? Can you really count the insane as truly being of this world, or should they be classified as the dearly departed of this specific reality?" He said nothing, and she leaned back to lay against the steps with her arms spread out, staring up at the far-away ceiling. "Azkaban trial texts can be _very enlightening, Longbottom," she informed him. "Driven insane by the Cruciatus Curse." She clicked her tongue in the same manner Professor Sprout did when she came across an unsatisfactorily re-potted plant. "What an...undignified...way to go, wouldn't you agree?"_

                "Sh...sh-shut up," Neville whimpered.

                "You know what, Longbottom, I don't think I will. Now, who were the accused...ah, yes. Claude and Corinne Lestrange – a rather adorable couple, I'd imagine – Mikhail Bolotov, and Bartemius Crouch, Jr. Hm. Now, see, it's that last one I find most interesting. It is, don't you think? Interesting?" A light sheen of sweat had begun to collect on the boy's forehead, and he'd developed something of a tremor. Gwendolyn sat up sharply, and he jumped, as well as one _could jump with one foot wedged in a step. "You know, I have to tell you, Longbottom, you're a fairly poor conversationalist. But I won't hold it against you. Where was I? Oh, right – Bartemius Crouch, Jr. Surely even someone as forgetful as yourself can remember the events of last year, at this very school. Bartemius Crouch, Jr. posing as Auror-cum-professor Alastor Moody."_

                She stood, came down a step, moved her face very close to his. Even without the step, she would have been taller than he by two inches. "Tell me, Longbottom," she hissed, sinister smile still playing on her lips, "how did it feel when you realised that the same man you had been receiving lessons from for ten months, was the same man who tortured your parents into insanity?"

                "You stay away from me," he whispered, his eyes already pink and damp with unshed tears, "you s-sick freak."

                She drew back, the smile dissipating into a pout. "That's not a very nice thing to say to a lady. What would your mother think of your manners? But then, she doesn't think much anymore, does she? Not about you, at least."

                "You sh-shut up about my mother."

                "Well," Gwendolyn sighed, "if you insist. Don't look so stricken, Longbottom. I meant it all in fun." The smile returned, this one brighter, almost manically happy, and she leapt past both him and the step that held his podgy foot and continued on her way toward the dungeons. When she reached the base of the stairway, she spun around and called, "Remember, Longbottom." He twisted his head around to glare at her. "Just a bit of fun," she said. She flashed him another brilliant grin, and left him to his quandary.

                Malfoy was going to love this.

~*~

¹_ "__Bonsoir, mon amour.__ Jusqu'à la prochaine fois." – "Good-night, my love. Until next time." Of course, it's been a good long while since my last French lesson, so it may be off. And on the subject of French things, a note to Elspeth – Gwendolyn does indeed enjoy the works of the Marquis de Sade, especially Justine. She adores him as I do. ;)_


	14. Cry Wolf

Aie. I'm so sorry this took so long to get out. I got distracted, then I took ill, then distraction struck again, etc. But Faith put "Don't Stand So Close to Me" by The Police on repeat, and I couldn't listen to it and not write. Damn her for knowing my weaknesses.

This chapter's slightly shorter than the others, but I figured I should post it anyway, because I really didn't want to keep people waiting for another few weeks. And to bosch - thank you! :)

I've never written Lupin before, so if I royally screw over his characterisation, apologies. Without further ado...

  


**Part 14 - Cry Wolf**

  
The versipellis was leery tonight. Though it would be nearly another month before he slid out of his human skin again, he shifted uncomfortably as though his flesh itched beneath its weathered hide. His nostrils flared, and Severus would have enjoyed sewing them shut with a dull needle. Hazel eyes in a half-squint studied him warily, sight wrestling with scent, trying to discern something about the dark man seated next to him at the High Table.

_He knows..._ the voice hissed, high and cold, like a quiet shriek. _He can smell her on you, smell what she did to you._

The wounds on his back had dried to his robes, sticky and pinching, ensuring that they would bleed again when he later undressed for bed. They twinged lightly with pain, as if he really needed to be reminded...

He caught Lupin's gaze, knew his own eyes were glittering with ferocity, almost daring the turnskin to speak of what he thought he scented. Blood, death, sex, and the latter mightn't have been any of his concern had the strange musk not been so damned familiar, had it actually been recognisable as belonging to one of the other professors, if not from a stranger.

"Something troubles you, Lupin?" Mocking words spat out in a dangerous, seething tone, and the other man turned grave and guarded as though he'd stumbled upon a secret sweet to save for later.

"No. There is nothing, Severus. Nothing at all."

No evidence but for the talon-marks on his back and the mould of his teeth in her chest, and there was no way to tell they either had been given their injuries by the other. Lupin's keen nose would cast no guilt upon either of them - who would trust a werewolf?

Dumbledore would. But Dumbledore's opinion could be worth surprisingly little amidst a jury who would sooner see the witness lynched than the accused.

Lupin shook his head, trying to rid the thoughts from his mind, if not his instincts. Severus was a dark man - in truth, Lupin himself had unwittingly helped to shape that poisoned personality, and was now regretful of that fact - but surely he was not as dark as all that. He was a man of basic decency, wasn't he? Dumbledore would not have consented to hire him if he thought otherwise...

But the _smell_ on him, the crushing, cloudy odour of things most unsuitable for public conversation, of Severus' own blood, and the blood of another which Lupin had scented before...he had occasionally forgotten a name, or even a face, but never a scent, never a scent and the realisation was plain as day before him though he protested the very notion of such a decadence being indulged. Had Sirius been present at the meal, he would have bluntly stated that which Remus was trying very hard not to believe: "Snape fucked a student."

And taking her had not been the only thing he'd done, from what the versipellis could smell. He had hurt her, and she him, and his heart fell into his stomach when he considered that the Potions master's wounds might have been the result of a struggle between them.

Sirius' voice floated in his head again: "Snape raped a student."

No. No - there was no proof of that, no proof that the pain had not been consensual, though its presence at all drove Remus' appetite away. It was wrong on every base level - wrong for a professor to take advantage of his position of helping to sculpt youthful minds, wrong to harm one of his charges, be it in lust, anger or both, whether or not she enjoyed it. The image of a broken girl passed through Lupin's mind - what if it hadn't been consensual? As tentative as he was to accept that Severus was a monster without knowing the whole story - he had dealt with that stigma for most of his life, and was wary of pressing it onto another - he could not push away his thoughts of the worst, that down in the Slytherin dungeons was a frightened sixteen-year-old girl, too terrified of what retribution could await her if she dared tell anyone of what had happened to her. Weighing his options, he decided he could not allow something like that to happen; he would rather risk being wrong than doing nothing and being right. But how to go about his investigation...

The lingering scent of depravity was quite suddenly overwhelmed by that of charring flesh, just as telling of moral decay, and the Potions master rose from his seat with a sneer and a polite travesty of an "Excuse me."

Lupin watched him go, a deep frown etched into his face at the pungent traces of recent events that floated in the darker man's wake.

Upon exiting the Great Hall, Severus gripped his left forearm tightly, pressing his nails into the come-hither burn. There had been others - those who had fallen into disgrace with the Dark Lord - who had been made to claw the Mark from their fleshy tissue while under the Imperius Curse. It had been an odd thing to observe, for no matter how deeply they dug, the layers of muscle and fat were just as inky black as the epidermis, and against the discolouration their blood had resembled seeping tar.

He made haste descending into his dungeons, where his Slytherins continued their merriment in their common room. He would have to make an appearance when he returned if to do nothing more than congratulate them on their victory. Minerva McGonagall had scarcely said a word at dinner, and that much was an accomplishment to which he owed them his gratitude.

The trip by flue to his estate was fast, and this time he had managed to not nearly barrel over a House Elf when he rolled out of his sitting room fireplace and to his feet. He concentrated on an image of Lord Voldemort, locking the Dark wizard's presence in his mind and then Disapparating, knowing that the thought would carry him along the ghostly teleportation roads interwoven into the magical energies encompassing the earth by witches and wizards many thousands of years ago, something like the Floo Network with no limit to the possible destinations. He felt his body piece itself back together as he Apparated, and opened his eyes.

Lord Voldemort had obviously changed the location of his little hideaway. Gone was the gaping maw of the cave, and in its place was a rather opulent if foreboding foyer, with stretching columns of fine black marble and a thick green carpet running the length of the room, leading to a large stone throne on which his Dark Lord sat leisurely. Severus ignored the serpentine man's relaxed stance - the true predators never wholly let down their guard, and Lord Voldemort was, if anything, a predator, a true master of manipulation. His stillness was no more relaxed than a cobra who was poised to strike.

At his side was the servant Wormtail, standing obediently like a loyal pet caught in a choke-chain. Snivelling little Peter Pettigrew had proved to be an adept manipulator in his own right, if an excessively petty one, driven by cowardice and resentment. Severus loathed the rodent, and had his suspicions that Lord Voldemort was no more fond of him. But Pettigrew's loyalty was born out of fear and self-preservation, and to a rat such as he, those things made his allegiance to the Dark Lord unquestionable, and that was worth far more to the Dark wizard than mere personal partiality.

Severus approached the throne and knelt with the others who had been called - he recognised Crabbe and Goyle through their massive statures alone, which meant that Lucius was also most likely among them, as the two bulky Death Eaters scarcely possessed a whole brain between them and were nothing without Malfoy's translation of the Dark Lord's eloquent orders into the most basic English.

"My Lord," he said quietly, and Voldemort gestured for them to stand, his flat nostrils flaring slightly in tedium. He was silent for a moment, for the dramatic impact of a pause as much gathering his words.

"Ah, my children..." he spoke at last, an arctic smile slipping over his thin lips, bearing sharp, bleach-white teeth. "The time has come to discuss the future of your own heirs."

Severus did not question why he had been called, as he had no heir - his home was the Hogwarts castle, and as Head of Slytherin House, he was, in a way, the most important 'parent' present. His surveillance of the students in that particular habit was invaluable in the shaping of the next generation of Death Eaters, not only for those whose families had already sworn faithfulness to the Dark Lord. He was meant to act as a scout of sorts, weeding out those who would forsake their blood-relatives for this degenerate family and cultivating their minds to Lord Voldemort's Dark cause.

His mind went immediately to the Cross girl, already corrupt in so many ways. Such a finding would please the Dark Lord. If he revealed her to him. Of course, he would have to - the girl's friendship with Draco Malfoy had all but ensured of Lucius' knowledge of her existence, and he knew his son would not consort so closely with anyone who didn't have a predilection toward the Dark side of things. He would grow suspicious if Severus omitted mention of her, and suspicion was as deadly as proof in a circle such as this one. Not that he had much of a problem with handing her over to the Dark Lord on a silver platter. Chances were she would end up there sooner or later, and he would not be held responsible for the personal beliefs of his students. Still, hesitation tugged at his mind, along with the fierce thought that she was his, his possession, his plaything, and he was chary of sharing her with anyone. He had taken her, made her his through the pain she so adored, but even his cruelties were naught compared to those of Lord Voldemort's, and he was not eager to present her to such a great agony. He would not allow her to be so vacillating in her adulations, not when the intoxication of her was still so fresh in his body, in his head.

He did not know that someone had already taken that particular burden off his shoulders.

"Lucius," Voldemort hissed, forked tongue savouring the asp-like feel of Malfoy's name, "tell me, how is young Draco? He was but a babe when I saw him last, a cherub of a child...how has the angel fared his fall?"

"He has turned out well, my Lord," Lucius answered, head dipped respectfully. "A point of immense pride for Narcissa and myself. We have brought him up to believe in our ways, and he wraps himself in them like a warm blanket. He is most eager to take his place in your reign."

Voldemort's smile widened slightly. "Well done, my slippery friend, very well done indeed. Crabbe, Goyle...I trust your sons have looked to young Mr. Malfoy as an example of what is expected of them?"

Brutus Crabbe and Boris Goyle mumbled affirmative answers, nodding their heads like fat, bumbling birds. Voldemort passed over them seeming almost bored, and with good cause - Snape oftentimes did the same thing with their sons. Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle had very little true evil in them; they were simply too stupid and brought up in such severe ignorance that there was little chance of either of them doing anything more than acting as guard dogs. Their lack of real ambition was a mockery to Slytherin House, and Snape had long believed that the Sorting Hat had simply taken to lumping in the cruel with the cunning, as though Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws could never be so twisted, never so sadistic. Wouldn't it be surprised to know the number of former Hufflepuffs in the Death Eater population. They were known for being loyal and hardworking, yes, but that did not mean that they would not be loyal to Darkness, that they would not work hard at accomplishing the most terrible of tasks.

"And Stephen Cross..."

Snape's head jerked up at the name, but he hid the motion quickly, catching out of the corner of his eye a tall Death Eater with his masked face upturned. He surreptitiously studied the man, who held himself with a quiet but not wholly predatory grace, whose voice betrayed no nervousness, but rather a firm sort of acceptance. So this was the girl's father. _From forth the fatal loins of these two foes..._

"New amongst our ranks," Voldemort continued, managing to sound both indolent and intrigued. "You have a daughter, am I correct?"

Of course, he knew the answer already. The Dark Lord was so very fond of patronising questions. Passive sadism.

"Yes, my Lord - Gwendolyn," replied Cross. Voldemort's forked tongue slithered out to lick his teeth.

"And she will not disappoint me? I do loathe being...disappointed, don't I, Wormtail?"

Wormtail stuttered out a positive response, a slight tick going in his fleshy left cheek, full of fear and anticipation. Severus wondered how he never seemed to tire of such two-dimensional emotions.

"She...has no knowledge of my involvement in these matters, my Lord, but she is...a very open-minded child. Her inclinations fall toward our ways; she will put up no resistance to our cause."

No lies, no extravagant promises; simple truth and reassurance. Severus determined Mr. Cross to be a man of decent intelligence.

"Severus..." Voldemort hissed, and Snape tilted his head oh so slightly upward, questioningly. "Your assessment of Miss Gwendolyn Cross."

_She's a screamer..._ "A talented Slytherin, my Lord. She has earned the favour of young Messrs. Malfoy, Nott, Warrington and Montague;"_ ...such a glorious mouth...the most beautiful shrieks reside there..._ "She excels at potion-making and history, and does possess a certain dissolute proclivity that would flourish under your...guidance." _Far more under mine..._

The Dark Lord nodded, warily pleased with what he had been told. Cross glanced briefly at the Potions master, though it was impossible to decipher his thoughts on the matter - one of the unwavering requirements for becoming an Unspeakable was an impenetrable gaze. Severus could not help but wonder what had caused the man to choose to walk this particular path, stringing his family along behind him. Unspeakables were far more powerful than the general public was led to believe - cunning and ruthless, collectors of secrets. Whatever ambitions this man held, his loyalty to Lord Voldemort would never be as set in stone as Peter Pettigrew's. His allegiance was, for lack of a better word, needless. He already possessed wealth, means to utilise his vices. His occupation was one that would allow him to kill, if circumstances came to that - and circumstances could be easily forged. Though perhaps his tastes ran more along the lines of those of Severus' himself - to kill was not enough. Death was irrelevant. It was the hunt, feasting off the prey as it still thrashed beneath his snapping jaws that excited him, thrilled him like nothing else, or perhaps one thing else. It was possible that Mr. Cross, too, craved that delight.

Voldemort moved on through the pack of Death Eaters at his feet: Nott, Warrington and Montague, Greengrass and Davis, Parkinson, Pucey, Zabini and so on. Sometimes Severus would be asked his opinion on the youth in question, others, the Dark Lord was sound in his opinion of.

Severus noticed that Dominic Flint was absent from the group - young Marcus must have been recently initiated into the fold. He remembered the boy well; a star Quidditch player, if lacking in the skills of academia. What team did he play for now...ah, yes, the Bigonville Bombers of Luxembourg. Fourth in the international league and rising quickly under the guidance of a Durmstrang alumnus whom Severus believed was involved in the recruiting sect of the Death Eaters, a group of would-be cult leaders. Needless to say, as a captain of one of the most celebrated Quidditch teams in all of Europe that year, the man undoubtedly had a considerable sway with the young, idealistic rogues that were becoming more common with each day that passed.

Every so often, Snape would catch Stephen Cross glancing surreptitiously in his direction, as though he was burning to inquire further of the Potions master's evaluation of his pride and joy, and every time, the glanced at would both form and answer a question in his head, or a comment he did not dare speak aloud.

Question: "What has Gwendolyn done to prove this 'dissolute proclivity' of which you speak?"

Answer: "She carves up small animals as though they were birthday cakes. She threatened to slit the throat of one of her peers."

Question: "Does she encourage whatever adolescent behaviour the boys she has befriended no doubt openly display?"

Answer: "She has no apparent interest in boys."

Response: "Oh?"

Counter-question: "Are you aware that I fucked your daughter over a desk not two hours ago?"

Answer: "I was not."

Question: "Would you like to see the marks she left?"

Answer: "I would not."

Question: "The marks I left?"

Answer: "_Avada Kedavra_."

No, Snape would not be seeking out Mr. Stephen Cross for polite conversation.

The symposium topic eventually waned away from the lambs being led to slaughter, and their butchers were dismissed to go about their personal business, with the exception of Lucius Malfoy, who remained for 'a word' with his King of Kings. Severus Disapparated back to his estate before Cross could corner him and grabbed a polished brass poker that had been resting near the fireplace to scratch his back, which was itching like mad, scabbing wounds grating against the rough wool of his winter robes, snagging along the deep impressions of her nails like the raking of ghosts' nails.

Out of idle interest, he replaced the poker in its stand and shrugged the thick black fabric off his shoulders so that it hung by the clasp at his waist. The sitting room had in it a decent-sized mirror in an ornately carved silver frame, and he inspected his injuries for the first time.

His front looked, for the most part, as it always did - lean, pale, unmarred but for a few talon-marks curving over his shoulders. When he twisted around to view his back, the sight was quite different. Long, jagged slashes in the flesh there, beginning beneath the blades of his shoulders, shooting up like lightning, curdle-red in colour and smouldering peppery pain. He thought of Potter, Potter's scar borne of a lethal curse, Potter's scar that burned.

Fuck Potter.

They were becoming infected - that much he could tell already. Angry-looking welts enflaming his skin in precise little borders, the black fuzz from his robes caught in serrated lines of dried blood. They would need to be cleaned tonight, preferably bandaged as well. He would have asked one of his House Elves for assistance, but they feared him far too much to do anything but hide from him, and even if he managed to catch one of them as they were needlessly tidying up one of the rooms, it would probably shake so fiercely that nothing relevant could be accomplished.

_Shaking hands. Her hands. Shivering like spiders._

He pushed the thought away - he did not need it now, did not need to want her again so quickly after their encounter, did not need to want to feel her spine bowing crookedly beneath his hands as she arched against him, did not need...

It was dangerous to want this greatly, that much knowledge his fractured mind had retained. Deadly to crave so violently, and they had both been infected by that terminal disease. They weakened each other, feeding off of each other's insanity and repelling it all at the same time, like twin poles on a magnet, a perfect match in all the wrong ways, like a body rejecting a vital organ it had been born with. Nonsensical. Contradictory. Like a train wreck - didn't want to watch, couldn't tear his eyes away.

With a slight shudder, he pulled his robes back over his shoulders, biting back a hiss as the fabric rubbed against the raw wounds. He would dilute a wound-cleaning potion into a bath tonight to soak away the infection from his skin, wear something smoother, lighter than wool tomorrow in place of proper bandages. It would have to do.

He glanced once more in the mirror, at his face, and almost didn't notice that he still wore the bone-white Death Eater mask. He removed it, rid himself of it with a wave of his wand, and Disapparated for the front gates of the Hogwarts castle.

~*~

He did not mention Voldemort's calling to Dumbledore, reasoning that any information regarding the future of certain Slytherin charges would be redundant - their parents had been tried some fifteen years ago; the headmaster was well aware of their impending fates, and, unless their blood relations were caught red-handed or the Dark Lord fell once again before they departed Hogwarts, he had little hope of saving them. All he could do was offer them open companionship, and hope that through gentle conversation he might shed some Light on their grisly loyalties.

The only new development was that of the Cross girl's father having been newly inducted into the Death Eater fold, and Severus had no intention of sharing that particular insight with anyone, let alone Albus Dumbledore. The fewer shady glances the headmaster cast her way, the better, for the less he worried, the less chance there was of him discerning her true nature, and the nature of her relationship with Severus himself. What he had done...spy or ignorant bystander, his actions were deplorable, inexcusable in both a professional and moral sense, and the old man's confidence in him would be irreversibly shaken, and his patience and forgiveness, though formidable, doubtfully stretched to matters such as that. Severus could not risk losing Dumbledore's trust, not now, not when there was still so much to decipher, to decide. Too many moves to make.

Lupin had taken to squinting at him as often as possible - yes, there was no doubt that he knew, or at least had his suspicions. He would squint, and Severus would always respond with an arched brow, a taunting scowl. It had occurred to him that provoking a werewolf, even one as neutered and tamed as Remus Lupin, was not the wisest course of action to take, but with each sideways glance, he found himself caring less and less. At times, Severus thought himself far more wolf than Lupin. The turnskin was just so damned...human. Vulnerable to the sort of emotions that break men's spirits - sorrow, regret. Guilt. Severus had caught the versipellis' gaze lingering on Miss Granger for far longer than could be considered proper, and no down Lupin retired to his chambers every night to flog and punish. Perhaps he got Black to help him. Severus would not have been surprised.

Saturday brought with it the first Hogsmeade trip of the new year, and it was his turn to play chaperone, along with Lupin, Sinistra and Sprout. By ten in the morning, all of the third-years and up that had been granted permission to visit the wizarding village had crowded into the castle's foyer, filling it with the screeches of adolescent natters, the volume of which could have put a pack of chorusing harpies to shame. _She_ was there, of course - somewhere to the right of him, he knew, though he kept his gaze to the forefront of the chaos. His eyes shifted over to Lupin, who was scolding a group of Ravenclaw seventh-years on the verge of duelling with the Weasley twins to see who could come up with the funniest-looking hexes. As if sensing his stare, the turnskin turned to look at him, and then past him, and Severus knew where his gaze came to rest.

After a few minutes of attempting to gain some form of order, the group left the castle and started on the brief walk to Hogsmeade. He watched her out of the periphery of his vision; she was speaking, unsurprisingly, with Warrington and Malfoy, with Nott and Montague behind them, and Crabbe and Goyle on either side of the group of five like great moving stone pillars. The few words he caught of their conversation were inconsequential - the boys were still raving about their Quidditch victory against Gryffindor, and she was, quite obviously, humouring them with idle comments and off-hand remarks. Her mind held other memories of the previous evening.

"You should have been there," Montague told her for what had to be the dozenth time. She never replied to him with anything more than a small smile, perhaps a shrug, brushing the game from her thoughts as though it were an errant bit of fuzz marring her robes.

They reached the wizarding town quickly, and both students and faculty members scattered throughout - Sprout to Honeydukes, Sinistra to Dervish and Banges, and Severus himself disappeared into the Hog's Head, which was far less likely to be populated by adolescents than the Three Broomsticks and thus a far more favourable establishment. He either did not notice the grave-looking figure enter but a few moments behind him, or did not care. He ordered a brandy, and took a seat near the back, just beyond a group of burly warlocks engaged in a boisterous game of poker deep within a cloud of bittersweet pipe smoke.

His brandy appeared not a minute later, and he glanced up when the hand that had set it on the table, and the body attached to it, made no move to leave.

"Hello, Lupin," he drawled lazily, taking a long sip of his drink and grimacing only slightly at the following burn that slid down his throat.

"Severus. May I join you?"

"Who am I to deny your indulgence of masochism?"

The versipellis sat with his back to the poker game and fixed the Potions master with a calculating stare. Severus maintained an unaffected visage, and continued about his drinking as if oblivious to the other man's presence.

When he had nearly finished, Lupin spoke.

"You did it, didn't you?"

Severus did not pretend not to know what the turnskin was speaking of, instead choosing to respond by finishing off the last of his brandy.

"You're not even going to try and deny it," Lupin spoke again, the intensity of his stare wavering with a mixture of abhorrence and...pity? ...no, that couldn't have been right. "How could you?"

Ah, yes. "How could you?" One of the staple phrases of the heroic sort. Severus was nearly inclined to laugh. Nearly. He kept his silence.

"She's your student, for God's sake," the turnskin continued. "She's _sixteen_. How could you allow this to happen?"

The Potions master motioned to the barkeep for another drink, and when he at last relented an answer, he sounded almost bored.

"I lost control."

"You...you lost control?" Lupin repeated, his expression one of complete disbelief. He sat back in his chair, and when Severus' drink was brought over, he ordered a scotch for himself. "We have never been friends, Snape," he said quietly after a brief spell of quiet, "but I do know you. Everything you are is about control. In fact, I...I always thought you might go mad were you to ever lose it."

Black eyes shifted up to meet hazel, full of bitter contempt. "Who is to say I have not?"

"Madness is a cheap scapegoat to you, Severus. You are too..._responsible_...to yield to it so easily."

"You presume I did not fight against it? That I did not struggle with it for weeks - _months_?"

"Then you did not struggle hard enough!" Lupin hissed. "What you have done - it's unforgivable, Snape. To abuse your position in such a way...it's sick. Giving into temptation is _not_ madness, and damn you for trying to use that as an excuse to take pleasure in something so degenerate!"

"Pleasure?" Severus spat, his mouth twisting into a grimace. "Do you think I enjoy what she is doing to me, to my mind? She's like a plague, an infestation of maggots and death consuming everything that is me until all that is left is her, her psychosis. She is not sane, Lupin."

The versipellis regarded the man sitting across from him with a sceptical, disturbed frown that made his already tired-looking appearance seem broken, shattered.

"Severus..." he said slowly, "...if what you say is true, you must put as much distance between yourself and this girl as possible. She needs help, she needs a professional--"

"Shhh," Snape cut him off, a small sneer curling on his lips. "My sanity suffers as hers does, Lupin," he murmured, and Remus noticed for the first time the tinge of dementia in his softly threatening tone. It made his hair stand on end.

"It is hers," Severus continued, "and she is mine. She is _mine_, Lupin, mine to have, mine to hate, and you will not deny me my vengeance against her for stealing my mind away. I will not allow it, and neither will she. Bite your tongue, turnskin, or I will bite it off for you."

The Potions master was grinning at him wolfishly, making him bristle further. Without a word, he rose and moved to go, leaving his drink untouched on the table and Snape with a feral, warning glare, letting the darker man know that this was far from their final conflict on the matter.

When he had gone, Severus sobered immediately, a hard, dangerous stare fixed on the place Lupin had vacated.

"If the wolf howls," he whispered to himself, "I will make him lame. He will whimper before he dares to bay. If he thinks _me_ the vile animal, so be it, for she has infected me with a rabid advantage. Let him think me a beast. He can be the hare." 


	15. Of Dark Blood and Fucking Thee

For your reading pleasure, a dark and rather raunchy chapter, and for some reason I have a feeling it might piss some people off, thus those of fragile constitutions are advised to steer away. The title is taken from a Cradle of Filth song by the same name, minus the 'thee', whose lyrics were all too perfect for this part. Also quoted is Tennessee Williams.

To my reviewers: Thanks ever so much for being patient with me. The next chapter will be out faster, now that I've gotten back on track with where this is going. I Have A Plan, And All Has A Purpose. And, please, no one think that Gwendolyn's actions are going to be without consequences. I am very aware that people reap what they sow. Just hush and wait and watch. And review. ;)

  


**Part 15 - Of Dark Blood and Fucking Thee**

  
Her mouth was stained red when she came to him that night, sought him out and found him in his office. The others, tired from their day in Hogsmeade, had retired to bed early, but not her, never her. The werewolf had been mute through dinner, but had kept his filthy eyes upon her the entire time, glare on his weathered face as he tore into his meat, whilst next to him Snape drank his wine with no less composure than he usually exhibited, but for an odd, unhinged glint in his gaze that only two knew to look for.

He'd been waiting for her, he supposed. She was a Slytherin, after all, and as her Head of House he was obligated to keep his time free to hear out her misgivings. She'd knocked, and he had bade her entrance, had not moved from his chair, instead choosing to let her come to him. She did, of course. Climbed up onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his throat as he plucked the lollipop she had purchased from Honeydukes that afternoon from her lips. Blood-flavoured, from the taste of her tongue. As though she would have chosen anything else.

He crushed her against him with a low growl, impatient hands slithering along her body, tense and white-knuckled as he resisted the urge to rake the flesh from her bones. She was clothed only in that little slip of a nightdress she so favoured, and he would have torn it from her shoulders had she not pulled abruptly away from him, a feral smile on her face.

"Show me your room," she demanded. Severus gripped her hair - already loose and spilling and begging to be ripped out - and jerked her head back, exposing her neck to him. He licked a teasing trail from her collarbone to her jawline, and at the feel of her pulse pounding beneath his lips he knew he was lost. Not releasing his grasp on her hair, he pulled her back further until she was forced to stand, and rose before shoving her away.

He started wordlessly for the door, and she followed him, shaky hands clenching and unclenching at her sides. They stalked down the dungeon corridors, to the end of the one his office was located in, a left at the second one, then thirteen paces down to the heavy arched door. He unlocked it with a whispered incantation, and no sooner had they stepped inside than she grabbed him by the back of his robes and threw him against the door, effectively slamming it shut with a loud bang. Fury flashed red behind his eyes, but she was already upon him again.

"Do not kick me away or lead me on a leash as though I were a bitch, dear Professor;" she whispered, rising up on her toes to sink her teeth into his ear, "you cannot tame me."

"A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages," he hissed, turning his head to capture her mouth in another brutal kiss as he pushed off from the door. They half-stumbled toward the bed, but only made it so far as to fall on the sofa, him on top of her. She wrapped a leg around one of his, and he wrenched her arms up over her head, pinning both wrists roughly against the wooden armrest as he tore the thin straps of her nightdress, lifted her slightly to peel it off. Hoarse words escaped him, "Lupin knows..."

"How?" she asked as she pressed her hips into his, and was rewarded with a low groan that snaked up from deep within his breast. 

"He scented it..." he murmured against her neck. The leg she had wrapped around him slid up along his thigh.

"Do you care?"

"No. He will keep his silence."

"And if he doesn't?"

He tore himself away from his explorations of the cobalt veins that spider-webbed just beneath the skin of her bosom to stare into her face as he harshly rasped, "Then I will sew his mouth shut with a dull needle."

A happy purr rumbled in her throat. "Mm...may I watch?" He released her wrists, and she laced her hands through his hair, dragging her nails over his scalp, drawing from him an enticing shudder.

"You may adorn the thread with his teeth. Sin deep, my wicked angel."

All traces of a smile faded from her face, envy-green eyes darkening at his words, hands slipping down along his chest, undoing the clasps on his robes. She pushed the material off his shoulders, twisted his arms free of the sleeves and grazed his bare skin with her teeth once before biting into the flesh beneath his right collarbone, piercing deep as blood. He shivered with the sharp, sweet pain of it, tasted the metallic spice in her mouth as he kissed her cruelly again, as the urgency of the need for the debauched deed intensified. Blood rushing, pounding in his skull in time with the rapid beating of his heart drowned out all sound, save for the chilling hums of pleasure that slipped off her tongue and onto his as she used her feet to slide his robes down past the sharp angles of his hips, past his legs to be kicked to the floor with his boots.

He was so warm, every part of him radiating heat, a bruising flame that licked along her body. She could feel Death's hollow stare upon them, the obsidian wraith a voyeur to their vice, skinless mouth drawn into an eternal, inhuman grin, like the arc of his scythe. The Potions master moved above her in a puppet-pantomime, and she curved back in a feline stretch as she luxuriated in the feel of him, outside and then -- oh, fuck, in, "Fuck!" Her curse or his, neither could tell, and neither gave a damn as long as they were moving, grinding, body against body, sweat against sweat, blood with blood, pain, ache -- fuck, the ache -- ears ringing, burning friction, all-consuming, oh _fuck_...

The rhythm of the primal dance overtook them, and Snape's mind buzzed with random, hazy thought that crashed against his psyche in nonsensical waves. This act was for making life, but he had no fears of impregnating her -- her body was not a life-giving vessel, but one of death; bones and skin and barren cold but for the heat within her, enveloping him, but if this was death then he envied every man he had ever killed, would kill himself with pleasure -- oh, gods, the pleasure...lovers' rotting, defiling heaven, prettifying hell, where fallen angels fuck filthy and devils kiss sweetly and skeletons screw and demons howl in a trance of crazed passion as ghosts gasp from wanton phantom touches caressing their corpses from beneath their graves.

He felt fresh gouges being carved into his back, his sides, her fingertips biting into his face, driving into his skin like coffin nails, scrambling, scratching wherever they could reach, blinded by frenzy, the foundation for future scars; scent of winter, scent of death, bodies humming, strumming violent overture, sweet and savage agony; panting like animals, snarling, squirming, screaming, ripping each other to shreds. He imagined Lupin looking on, watching them, horrified and hypnotised with a shocked gape on his face and a hand working furiously in his robes. Snape grinned madly at the idea and lowered his head to nip at her jugular. He bit down, hard, then wrapped an arm around her back to clasp her tightly to him as she shuddered against him, around him in release, the aftershocks of which kept her trembling as his own fever built white-hot, deep in his stomach and creeping lower. He shut his eyes, pushed deeper into her, and wondered fleetingly how strange it was that the same expression that contorted people's faces in ecstasy was the same one they used in grief before his climax swept viciously through him, erratically wracking his body until he collapsed over her.

Breath returned to them slowly, and for a long while neither moved, save for one of her hands idly threading through his hair. Somewhere in the back of his skull, a melancholic aria chanted a defloration of words like a sirensong that enfolded around his psyche as he fell from grace and into adoration of this mad creature beneath him. With his eyes quickly becoming heavy and leaden, he wearily rose, silently taking hold of her hand and leading her over to the bed. She crawled between the cool sheets first, and he slid in after, both on their sides and facing each other. Wrapping an arm around her, he drew her close and closed his eyes, and slipped into a black slumber, the first dreamless sleep he'd had in months. Gwendolyn remained awake for some time, going over the things he'd said in her head.

The turnskin would see Professor Snape in Azkaban for what he did with her. Why was she always chased by wolves...

She would not fear this wolf, nor would run from it, when the time came. This Death was too precious, and she had to protect it. Snape belonged to her now, _her_, and Professor Lupin wouldn't dream of speaking ill of the Potions master once she had her say with him. As the notion gradually took form in her mind, she pondered whether or not he would ever again dream of speaking at all.

~*~

She stole away from his room mid-Sunday-morning in his clothes, a white button-down shirt and black trousers held at her hips by a belt, all so often concealed by his robes that they would not be recognised as belonging to him. No one would question the ensemble - it wasn't ridiculously overlarge for her, and due to her slight frame most of her garments fit loose. She would have returned to her dormitory in her mended nightdress to change, but it displayed her injuries in nigh-full view, and _those_ most certainly _would_ be questioned, though they had spent the dawn cleaning each other's wounds from the previous night before the act had tempted them to create new ones.

She padded into the Great Hall for breakfast, as going barefoot wasn't out of the ordinary for her, and surveyed the room with a puzzled frown before taking a seat between Malfoy and Nott at the Slytherin table. The room was strangely quiet, with sombre faces filling the other tables, some frightened, some merely grave, whilst the other serpents carried on fairly normally, even a bit exultantly in certain groups. Malfoy was one of them, but he spoke before she could ask him what all the gloom and doom of the other Houses was about.

"Where've you been?" he demanded, spreading strawberry jam on a piece of toast.

"I slept in," she mumbled distractedly. The boy looked unconvinced.

"You, the girl allergic to waking after dawn, slept in?" he asked, arching a sceptical eyebrow.

"Mm-hm." She grabbed a muffin from the bowl sitting in front of her and picked at it absently. "What's everyone else so sullen about?"

Malfoy's face lit up instantly, a look of superior disbelief settling easily onto his features. "You mean you haven't heard? Don't you read the papers?"

"Rarely. What's happened?"

"Here," muttered Nott, sliding that morning's copy of the _Daily Prophet_ in front of her. She glanced down at the bold headline, and arched an eyebrow.

**Death Eaters Seize Azkaban; Minister of Magic Commits Suicide**

"Pity," she said indifferently, scanning the article beneath it.

"The Dementors all but handed the place over on a silver platter," Malfoy explained as she read. "Any Aurors who arrived either got Kissed or killed. When Fudge got wind of it, he didn't even go into the Ministry. They found him in his study at his house. Hung himself. The Deputy Minister's all but pissing himself - inept as Fudge, he is - he called Dumbledore in early this morning to sort things out, not that it'll do any good."

Gwendolyn glanced up at the High Table, where the faces of their professors matched the sternness of the students'. Sure enough, the headmaster was nowhere to be seen.

"What's the matter with you?" Malfoy asked. "I thought you'd be pleased. The only bad thing I can find with it is that they'll be upping the security around St. Mungo's, though I'm sure it'll be cracked eventually."

"I am pleased. Quite pleased, though I am a trifle disappointed in Minister Fudge."

"Why?"

"Because I believe suicide to be one of the most heinous acts a person can commit - and not heinous in the fun way. It's very disrespectful."

A befuddled frown marred Nott's brow. "Disrespectful to whom?"

"Death, of course. As though he doesn't have a demanding enough occupation already, people have to go and kill themselves without his consent, making his work that much more difficult. He already unappreciated enough as it is."

Malfoy waved the explanation off with a mumble of "Bloody weird..." Nott, on the other hand, appeared rather intrigued.

"And homicide? One life stealing another? How is that any different?"

"Murderers absorb a piece of Death himself when they kill. The corpses they leave to him are in tribute, in thanks for allowing them to glimpse his divinity."

"So you believe murderers are blessed, then?"

"In a nutshell, yes."

He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. "Are you blessed?"

Gwendolyn gave him a small, flippant smile. "Not yet. Why? Do you wish to bless me, Mr. Nott?"

Malfoy snorted into his pumpkin juice, laughing between coughs and splutters that turned his face pink. But Nott's face was unusually impassive, save for a slight, mischievous glint in his eye and the tiniest of smirks curling at the corners of his mouth. He stood, and wordlessly left the Great Hall.

"Bloody hell, Cross," Malfoy grinned once the other boy was out of earshot and had regained his ability to breathe, "you need to stop fucking with that boy's mind."

"Do you really think so?"

He thought for a second, then shrugged apathetically. "No. I think he might actually like it."

She smirked, and her gaze made its way once again to the High Table. In the place next to the empty one normally occupied by the Potions master, she found Professor Lupin staring at her with the same suspicious glare as he had worn the previous night at dinner. He didn't even bother to look away when she caught his eyes, dull hazel orbs that would have been more attractive out of their sockets and tipping her fingers. Rage coiled within her like a viper impatient to strike, but she would have to restrain herself, bide her time until the belly of February grew plump with pallid midnight luminosity, and the true nature of the beast revealed itself.

"What happened to your shoulder?" Malfoy's perplexed voice cut through her musings, jarred her out of her versipellis vexations.

Gwendolyn twisted her neck around, pulling the shirt toward her front to better see what it was the blond boy spoke of. A spot of crimson had seeped through the starched white fabric, and she swore under her breath.

"Damn...I was crouching under the sink in the bathroom earlier this morning because I'd dropped my lipstick, and I banged it on one of the pipes coming back up," she quickly lied.

"But you're not wearing any lipstick."

"Well, that's why. I was angry with it." Malfoy seemed to accept this as a perfectly Gwendolyn response, and she rose to leave. "I'm going to go change. I'll see you in the common room."

Malfoy nodded, and she stalked out of the Great Hall. She had not quite reached the dungeons when Professor Lupin's voice calling her name rang out through the Entrance Hall, and she sped up her pace, taking the stairs two at a time and then breaking into a full run when she reached the bottom.

"_Maleficus_," she hissed as she approached the aperture of the Slytherin dormitories. The hidden door scraped open, and she darted inside just as Lupin's hard footfalls could be heard down the hall.

The werewolf skidded to a halt as the wall closed some twenty yards down the empty corridor from him, and punched the wall in frustration, scraping his knuckles against the stone. "Shit," he snarled, running a hand through his already mussed hair as a dark figure rounded the corner at the end of the hallway, black eyes already narrowed into shady slits.

"Harassing one of my students, Lupin?" Snape asked, the picture of liquid calm and detachment. In truth, the bastard nearly looked amused, which only served to further infuriate the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. He seethed as the Potions master sauntered leisurely closer, close enough to hear his quietly spat response.

"You're a monster, Snape. She was bleeding."

"Was she? Then, as her Head of House, shouldn't _I_ be the one to tend to her...needs?" The last word was a silky drawl of perversion that caused Remus' stomach to churn in disgust at its implications. Without warning, he lunged for the other man, grabbing him by the front of his robes and pinning him forcefully against the wall. Snape grimaced at the dull pain that throbbed in his back with the blow, but the expression was quickly replaced with a disdainful sneer.

"You reek of her," Lupin whispered fiercely, nostrils flaring, mouth twisting in revulsion. "I _will_ stop this. I will stop _you_ from causing that girl any further harm. Mark my words, Severus, you will not get away with this...this repulsive want. Claim madness all you like; it won't matter what the jury believes of your sanity. Facts are facts. I will find evidence that will bring to light the atrocities you commit against her no matter how vehemently you or she protest, and whether you end up in Azkaban or St. Mungo's, you will pay for your crimes. Mark my words, Severus. You _will_ pay."

"Good boy," Snape murmured, wrath in his eyes along with something else, something almost...pleased. Mocking. "Go. Fetch."

Lupin released him with a final shove and malevolent glare, and started back for the Great Hall, pausing when the Potions master called, "And Lupin?" The versipellis turned, and Snape gave him a cold smile.

"A word of advice: Do not shit where you live. It can be most...detrimental...to your health."

Lupin's gaze lingered warningly for a moment before he continued on his way. Snape watched him go, a deep scowl etched into his face. Oh, to wrap a noose of chains around his neck and silence his yelps once and for all...

~*~

The month of January only just allowed a blue moon to slip through its frozen fingers, which really was a crime, as it would have held a certain poetic light to Gwendolyn's newfound ruse.

She had shrouded her plan from Severus at first, though she had been tempted to unveil it as the monkshood was forced into a contortion of violet blooms the week before.

_"I found it, my train of thought...it delivered me to the most lovely idea..."_

"Did it now? And what treasured crime was it that captured your wicked mind so?"

He'd initially been disapproving of the idea, but she had persisted in clarifying the whole of it to him before she would allow him to make a choice as to whether or not it was not only entertaining but wise as well.

_"No. The risk is too great. You could get hurt."_

"You like it when I hurt."

"By no other hand than my own. You are mine to hurt, not his."

His interest had been nonetheless piqued, and after many late-night and early-morning persuasions and conversations, and a great deal of careful crafting upon which he had insisted and she had not opposed, it had been decided.

_"Tomorrow night, when the aconite blooms 'til it boils, and the moon beckons all beasts into snarls of worship...we will snare him then, and he will hush, and we will howl until the dawn."_

It was a golden afternoon on the first of February, and Gwendolyn's skin was tingling in anticipation of the coming night. She sat on her dear professor's desk in silence, watching as the Potions master tip in the final ingredients of the Wolfsbane Potion into the simmering cauldron at the other end of the room. Once he had finished, he extinguished the flame beneath it and left it to steep for one hour, and made his way over to her.

"It is done, but for the straining. Are you absolutely certain you can---"

"From tip to toe," she cut him off. "We have been working on partial body transfigurations since we returned from the winter holidays. It's really not that difficult."

He nodded once, and leaned forward to place a delicate kiss on her shoulder. "And yet I cannot help but remain wary...perhaps I should be the one to go."

She walked two fingers down his neck and along his spine, and shook her head. "No. We've discussed this. He wants to..." she shuddered involuntarily, grimacing, "..._help_ me, and in order to do that, he believes he must gain my trust, and must in turn trust me. He is a foolish animal, but that will be his first impulse. Besides, I wish to have a little chat with him. I don't like the way he looks at me. So much pity and sympathy and righteous wonder; it's wretched."

He pulled back to look into her face, and what lingering unease had shadowed his eyes was no longer present. His gaze was hard, unreadable but for a hint of lividness flashing in their liquid black. "It's a pity we can't skin him. Werewolf pelts are worth a great deal on the Dark market."

Gwendolyn smiled, encircling his legs with hers and drawing him nearer to her. "All in due time. Pelts aren't the only things that fetch a shiny Sickle." She raised her face as if to kiss him, but drew away at the last moment to press her lips to his throat. "Sunset is in half an hour," she whispered, her cold breath making him shiver.

He stepped away from her and back toward the potion, still steaming but cool enough now to drink. Carefully, he strained a cupful into a waiting silver goblet, which he then handed to her. "Don't be late for dinner. And," he added as she turned to leave, his lips pursed in a cruel smirk, "do remember to wash your hands first."

Her mouth mirrored his. With a solitary nod, she floated from the room, disappearing from his sight like a wandering spectre. Snape wondered if Lupin had ever been afraid of ghosts.

~*~

The turnskin paced the length of his office, back and forth, like a caged animal impatient for its release. Dusk was rapidly approaching, settling in a warm haze of the sharply waning sun, like a lazy lion curling around the earth. He clenched his fists and grit his teeth, already feeling the itch of his muscles squirming beneath his skin, the flesh burning to crawl into a different shape.

"Damn it," he growled, smacking the palm of his hand against his desk. "I hate having to rely on that...that slimy, sadistic..."

"Do you want me to go find him?" Sirius Black asked from where he was slouched against the wall.

Lupin shook his head. "No, no...by the time you found him and he got up here..." he trailed off, running a hand through his hair. "I may need to go to the Shrieking Shack if he doesn't get here soon."

"Why didn't you get the potion from him earlier?"

"I tried. I couldn't find him."

"Remus, if we need to go to the shack, we need to leave _now_. If you change inside the school---"

"I know!" the werewolf snarled, rounding on the fugitive predatorily. He sighed at Sirius' somewhat hurt frown, and he forced himself to calm down. "I'm sorry..."

"It's okay. You're...edgy," the Animagus mumbled, coming to stand near his friend and placing a hand on the versipellis' shoulder. "Ten minutes, all right? We'll give Snape ten minutes, and if he doesn't show, we'll make a run for the willow. Just like old times, eh?" he grinned, nearly chuckled; Lupin didn't.

As if on cue, a firm knocking resonated through the door.

"It's about bloody time," the Dark Arts professor muttered, going to answer it. "Sirius..." He turned, finding Snuffles already sitting serenely on the floor where Sirius had just stood. "Good boy."

Lupin opened the door, tongue poised to swear a blue streak at the Potions master, and was taken aback at the person it revealed, who was, without a doubt, not Severus Snape.

"Gwendolyn."

Gwendolyn, not Snape, standing just outside his office, goblet of Wolfsbane Potion in her right hand, a strange pout on her face and a pinkness to her eyes that betrayed her attempt to withhold the tears aching to be spilt behind them. _Oh, fuck, Severus...what have you done..._

"Professor," she began, a little croaking quaver to her voice, "I'm to give this to you." She gestured to the goblet, but when Lupin moved to take it, she pulled away. "I...I need to speak with you."

_Damn it! Damn it...why now...why the hell must it be now..._ "Gwendolyn, I...now's really not the best time. I have a...a previous engagement that needs my immediate attention, I'm sorry. I truly am, but tomorrow..."

Her face contorted into a sob. She sniffled loudly, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "Please. _Please_, Professor. It won't take long, I just..." she trailed off, pressing two fingers to her lips to stave off another cry. Panic began to rise in Lupin's throat -- if he pushed the girl away now, he could destroy all chances of reaching her, of helping her. If he pushed her away now, she might run back to _him_, and there was no doubt in the werewolf's mind that _he_ was the reason for her distress. If he pushed her away now, any further harm that came to her would be blood on his own hands. The thought made him ill.

"...all right. But know that my time is very limited at the moment. You cannot stay here long."

She nodded, "I understand," and he ushered her inside. The black dog sitting near his desk tilted its head quizzically at him. He had not told Sirius of the Cross girl's deadly involvement with Snape out of fear that the fugitive's rage would fly out of control, that he would endanger both himself and the girl, as there was yet any physical proof to convict the Potions master of his crimes. Unless the girl...unless she was ready to show her scars.

"Snuffles, go on," he urged the canine. "Go visit Mundungus and Arabella for awhile."

The dog whimpered confusedly, but at Lupin's firm gesture that he was not welcome, reluctantly left with its tail between its legs, casting an uneasy glare at the snivelling girl who watched him go with a look of equal suspicion.

Lupin shut the door and turned around. She had stopped crying, and was now standing tranquilly, her stare even, empty and still, the goblet still clutched in her hand. A sudden chill ran through him, causing the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end. He shoved the feeling away, and took a step closer to her, reaching out a hand.

"May I?" he asked, indicating the potion with his eyes.

"Of course," she murmured, handing him the goblet. Lupin raised it to his lips, glancing at her once over its rim before greedily gulping down every drop of liquid it contained. It tasted slightly different this time, but that was to be expected -- every batch tasted a bit off from the last. It was impossible to duplicate it exactly. The important thing was that he would not be transforming into what was, for all intents and purposes, a rabid wolf in front of a student. With any luck, he would not be transforming in front of her at all.

"What did you want to tell me?" he enquired after he had polished off the potion. "I'm sorry, but I must ask you to hurry. I don't have much time."

Gwendolyn blinked at him once, then sauntered over to the door, and clicked the lock into place.

"Miss Cross?"

"You, Professor Lupin," she answered, all traces of sorrow gone from her voice, its tone now filled with an odd certainty that did not fit with the situation. "I wish to talk about you."

He shifted awkwardly. "...I'm not sure I understand."

"Yes," she said, advancing upon him, "you do. You must. I want to talk about the way you behave whenever you're around me. You may not be one for decency, but I am, and I want it to stop."

"I beg your pardon?" he gaped incredulously. "I...indecent? _My_ behaviour? What the hell are you getting at?"

"Don't lie to me. I've seen you staring at me."

A smile of pure disbelief spread on his features, and he shook his head. "Gwendolyn, I assure you---"

"Twin pools of honey just..." she interrupted him, "...probing, trying to penetrate me, my mind. You _do_ wish to know my thoughts, do you not? What atrocities lurk beneath my skull. You, Professor, are a very inquisitive creature, seeking answers to questions that are not yours to ask." She was close to him now, very close, her body and face mere centimetres from his. "Why do I let him fuck me?" she whispered. "Why do I let him hurt me? And of course, would I let _you_ fuck me?"

He shook his head again, casting a glance to the window, to the rapidly setting sun. "You are unbelievable."

"Unbelievable? Yes, perhaps. Wrong? No."

"_Yes_---"

"No." She scowled, but that, too, melted abruptly away into a guiltless smile as she leaned forward on her toes, brushing herself against him. "You want to know what it would be like, what I would feel like with my body wrapped tight around yours as you thrust deep, throbbing with need. You could take me like an animal, as roughly as you have always craved to, but were too afraid of losing yourself in, and I would like it. Every sinful fantasy," she hissed, gazing up at him through half-lidded eyes and running a hand down his chest, "every carnal desire, where blood and lust have tasted the same..." The hand moved lower, along his stomach, his---

"No," he said firmly, gripping her wrist tightly and tossing her arm aside before stalking around to behind his desk and running a hand through his hair, rubbing his neck, trying to clear his foggy mind. His head buzzed with his body's anticipation of the change, misting over all thought with instinct. He didn't even notice she had moved until he felt an arm slip around his middle from behind, and a hand pressed into him much lower than that. His breath caught in his throat.

"Oh, really?" she sneered, massaging him through his robes. "Funny, because that's not the impression I'm getting right now."

He turned around and stepped away, inwardly cursing his lack of control over his body's reactions this close to the change. "Leave. Now," he ordered hoarsely. She shook her head.

"I don't think I will. I think I rather like it here."

A sudden wave of dizziness crashed over him -- perplexing, as his sense of perception was normally heightened just before his transformations, not dimmed. Something wasn't right. "What..." he choked out, grabbing hold of the back of his chair to steady himself as his body shook, as he wrestled against the laws of nature, fighting with the last rays of sunlight in the horizon. "What do you want from me?"

Her smile widened, and she trailed a finger down his stomach, stopping just above the place where his body would have much rather she touched, where his mind was so glad she didn't.

"Want, Professor? What do I want..." she paused, tapping her bottom lip with her finger in a show of faux-contemplation. "...your tongue."

His eyes widened in horrification at her words, but he was helpless to respond to them as the change gripped him. He cried out in pain as his muscles began to shift, as new, wire-sharp hair pierced through his skin. He groaned, a guttural, terrifying sound that ended in an inhuman howl. Gwendolyn stepped back, heart pounding in her chest so hard she thought her ribs might break, thought they did break, but no, no -- those were Lupin's bones, popping and splintering into a new shape. She watched, half-fearful, half-fascinated as his body warped, grew larger. His robes pulled taut with his size, then ripped away, falling to the floor in a puddle of threadbare grey fabric.

New flesh formed beneath darkening skin, rippling his body into something powerful, something ferocious. He arched forward, his spine curved up, all but breaking through his skin. His face elongated, the bones of his jaw stretching, protruding into a snout, his teeth sliding further out of his gums, tapering into fangs. A sickening crunch echoed through the room as his knees reversed the angle of their joints, and he buckled forward onto four legs. Only his eyes remained the same, pools of honey that looked up at her almost pleadingly before they closed, and he fell, hitting the ground with a dull thud, unconscious.

_It's over,_ she told herself, though for a few moments she could do nothing but draw shaky breaths and stare at the slumbering beast in front of her. _It's done. It's done, now take what you have come for._

Slowly, not taking her eyes off the werewolf, Gwendolyn took her wand from her pocket and pointed it at her left thumb.

_Concentrate. He is asleep. He can do nothing._

Inhaling deeply, she glanced down at her hand, and willed her own small change.

Her thumbnail thickened, curled out, tapering at the end as Lupin's teeth had, browning somewhat as it grew, until it was no longer a nail at all, but a sharp, ugly claw. She inspected it for a minute before repeating the transfiguration on her other fingernails, until both hands were tipped with lethal points.

"Well then, Professor," she murmured, kneeling down near his head and forcing open his mighty jaw, minding the fangs as she reached inside and took hold of the damp, pink length of flesh that lolled limply at the side of his mouth. "Let's see how well you bark accusations now."

The claws punctured it easily near the back, sliding all the way through with little resistance as dark blood spilled out the side of the wolf's mouth, pooling on the floor. With a sharp jerk and the sound of tearing muscle, she wrenched her prize free, and held it up to examine it. "One vexation taken care of," she whispered to herself. "I do wish I could take your hide, but as it is, I suppose I can settle for a partial skinning."

After setting the tongue aside and studying the angles of Lupin's body -- _Arithmancy really does come in handy; who knew?_ -- she braced herself against him, claws pressed deep into his pelt, and gave a brusque, flesh-shredding pull.


	16. Séquence d'Élaboration de Mort

**Part 16 - Séquence d'Élaboration de Mort**

  
Glacial water swirled clear pink down the drain, little pieces of fur and flesh spinning in a rancid whirlpool as she rinsed the blood from her hands, some of it hers, most of it his. Methodically, she pinched small splinters of wood embedded beneath her skin with her fingernails, which she had returned to their normal, thin sharpness only minutes before.

The turnskin's tongue had been washed as well, deposited into a small jar, and was now resting in her pocket silently, like a pet worm. She wondered if it would twist back into its human form with the dawn.

Deciding that her hands were as clean as they were going to get, Gwendolyn dried them on a few paper towels and inspected her appearance briefly in the mirror before leaving the empty third floor bathroom and making her way downstairs to the Great Hall for dinner.

She was not the first to arrive, nor was she the last. She wordlessly took her seat at the Slytherin table and immediately began piling her plate with food, mashed potatoes and peas and roasted turkey. She was so hungry.

Conversation droned around her like a swarm of flies, filling her head with pictures of maggots thriving in festering wounds. Would they cover Lupin in maggots? Probably not...but it was a nice thought.

"I wonder what all that's about," Warrington mumbled, nodding toward the High Table, where Professor Fletcher was whispering and gesturing heatedly to a handful of other faculty members -- Dumbledore, alarm and worry creasing his brow; McGonagall, whose eyes were wide with consternation, and whose mouth was set in a grim white line; Severus. Gwendolyn focused on the last, his face cold and emotionless as ever, but for a hard glare around his eyes. They flickered over to her for a split-second and widened ever so slightly in wonder before he, the headmaster and deputy headmistress rose from their seats and followed Professor Fletcher out the side door.

"Perhaps there is foul play a'foot," the Bloody Baron, who had hovered over to their end of the table, rasped. Gwendolyn could not suppress a shiver as the spectre ran an icy finger along her spine in what might have been a sensual gesture, or one meant to tell a secret. It was Tuesday; she would have to wait until Friday to ask him which it was, unless he consented to her visiting him tomorrow morning.

_No,_ she thought to herself, _not a'foot. A'slither._

"Well," said Malfoy, casting a sneer toward the Gryffindor table, "Potty and his sidekicks are still here, so it must be something worth knowing about, if they're not involved in it."

"They do look...concerned, though," Pansy murmured, eyes narrowing in the same direction as her boyfriend's. "That Mudblood bitch looks especially suspicious. Maybe it is about them. Maybe they did something and are afraid they've been caught."

Montague rolled his eyes. "Right. Like _they'd_ worry about getting caught. They're Dumbledore's favourites. Gods forbid if his precious Gryffindors do anything wrong without noble motivations."

"Noble motivations, indeed," the prefect Snoad scoffed from beside him. Apparently, Montague had taken her up on her broomstick proposition, and both of them had enjoyed it enough to give other, more comfortable aspects of corrupt behaviour a try. She often called him on his bullshit. He liked it. They suited each other well. "That's like getting off the hook for raping someone because you felt it was your righteous duty to add to the world's population."

Nott snorted. "Potter _would_ get off the hook for something like that. Of course, Dumbledore couldn't just let him get away completely clean -- he'd probably get detention."

"Oh, the poor wretch. How cruel," said Pansy, one hand flying to her throat in mock-horror.

"I don't know," Blaise put in. "I think it'd be rather fitting if Filch buggered him while he was made to clean out bedpans. Poor Potter, forced to deal with shit at either end."

"'Oh, Filch, please! No! Not the mop handle! Anything but the mop handle!' 'Dungbombs! Everywhere I turn, foul children setting off Dungbombs! How's _this_ for a Dungbomb, eh?'" The group sniggered at Malfoy's dramatic performance, which involved the blunt end of his knife prodding furiously at his mashed potatoes and a rather interesting use of his gravy.

"Sick little fucker, aren't you?" Snoad grinned.

Draco buffed his nails on his robes. "It's a point of pride."

Nott arched an eyebrow. "Malfoy, is there anything you do that _isn't_ a point of pride for you?"

Gwendolyn smirked. "Well, there's Pansy..."

A few low hisses and 'oooh's danced across the table, and a look of utter lividness rippled across Pansy's puggish features. Gwendolyn stuck out her tongue at the girl, and ran her as-yet-unused knife lightly along her own throat.

"Excuse me," Pansy mumbled, standing to leave. "I've lost my appetite."

Malfoy swore under his breath and watched her departing figure ditheringly. To follow and look pussy-whipped, or to stay in a show of callousness and forgo sex for one night, possibly more? Decisions, decisions...

Finally, he settled on a short sigh and an apathetic wave toward the doors she had just exited through. "I'll talk to her later. Tell me, Cross, is it your mission in life to disallow my getting laid as often as possible, or is that just a hobby you've picked up?" he asked, glowering at his American cohort disparagingly.

"Yes. You've deciphered my nefarious plot. Now I must kill you."

"Ah. And how exactly are you planning to craft my demise?"

"Well, I don't actually have anything planned, but I can improvise. How do you feel about a spoon?"

"Sure. You can use it to eat my arse."

Snoad grimaced. "Charming visual."

"And so apt at dinnertime," Montague pointed out. "Now you see what you've been missing, hanging out with all those stuffy prefects."

"Oh yes. Eating arse and fucking mash with a knife, how stimulating. I don't know how I ever managed without such vital and sage knowledge."

"It's granted to but a selective few," Warrington smirked. "But our Gwendolyn _is_ acting a bit more blatantly vicious than usual..."

"Yeah," Nott agreed. "What gives?"

Gwendolyn only shrugged, cutting into her turkey with her fork. "I'm feeling quite elated this evening, that's all."

"Any reason in particular?"

Another shrug, "No." But the vacant, faraway glint in her eyes did not support the lie, and she did not notice the calculating stare Nott had fixed upon her from across the table. Indeed, the majority of the group seemed disbelieving of her claim, but her mind was elsewhere, engulfed by replaying visions of a felled and bloodied beast and a triumphant sentiment. After all, she had conquered the sole fear she possessed. She had turned on the wolf, and it had, almost comically, ceased its chase in bewilderment, too stunned to realise that it, not she, had become the prey. She was the wolf now, nearly blessed, and Death had a special place reserved for her at his side, and in his bed.

A vision of lambs half-butchered and with chunks of fluffy wool sheared off at random danced in front of her, and she laughed, even more so at the befuddled frowns of her peers.

"What's so funny?" Montague asked as he carefully situated a line of peas on each prong of his fork. Gwendolyn only shook her head and smiled, and reached a hand up to entwine her fingers with the Bloody Baron's, relaxing into their comfortable coldness.

* * *

"Happiness is such a strange emotion," she admitted quietly, her voice echoing throughout one of the larger empty dungeon classrooms. "It's like a form of terror. I feel as though I could scream and cry and just...hurt _everything_. But then, that's not so different from normal, is it?"

"You wanting to hurt everything?"

"Happiness and terror. Along with despair, anguish, boredom, anger, and..." she paused, tilting her head contemplatively. "...contentment. It all tastes the same to me."

"And would you rather feel as others do?"

She was quick to reply to the question. "Oh, no. No, I much prefer this way of feeling. Never a dull moment." Another pause, this one accompanied by a small, wicked smirk. "I glanced at Finch-Fletchley today while passing him in the halls. His head was dangling from his neck, like Sir Nicholas', and his wand was sticking out of his esophagous in its place."

The Bloody Baron chuckled raspishly. "Was he very uncomfortable?"

"I don't know. Didn't want to talk to him. He was filthy, all covered in maggots trying to clean his blood." Gwendolyn wrinkled her nose in distaste, and the spectre ran an icy hand along one of hers, which was splayed out on the surface of the long wooden desk.

"Mm, yes," he hissed, floating in a slow circle around her, his fingers leaving hers to graze up along her arm and through her hair. "Unpleasant things, maggots. I was always rather partial to leeches, myself."

"Oh?"

"There was one in particular. Elizabeth was her name. Ne'er a prettier leech was born."

The girl tilted her head slightly to the side, and the Bloody Baron did not need to see her face to sense the pout that marred it. "Never?"

"Present company excluded," he amended, slipping around in front of her once more. "Tell me, my leech, what is it that has you in such high spirits this morning?"

Gwendolyn began to smile, but the gesture quickly faded from her mouth, and she looked away. "No. You would be---" She stopped suddenly, biting down on her tongue. "I presume too much. You...it would not please you, and I am...loathe to incense you."

"You are right -- you do presume too much. Whatever cruelty is bouncing around your brain, I can assure you that I will not find it offensive."

But she was adamant, and shook her head, "No," and the phantom had no choice but to contain his curiosity.

"Very well then. I will take joy in your delight regardless."

"Thank you," she murmured, and was about to say something more when a new voice slithered into the Potions classroom, a silky and slightly suspicious drawl.

"I hope I'm not interrupting anything?"

Gwendolyn turned, a tiny smile flitting about one of the corners of her mouth. "No, Professor. I couldn't sleep and went for a walk. The Baron found me, and was kind enough to keep me company for a short while," she explained, her eyes widening innocently. Severus nodded once, his lips pursing slightly.

"To bed, Miss Cross. And do try to remain there."

She slid off the wooden bench without a word, and left the room in no great hurry, pausing in the threshold to glance back and bid the Slytherin spectre good-night.

"Pleasant dreams, Lady Cross," the ghost replied with a short, formal nod. The girl disappeared, and he turned his attention to the Potions master, who had not moved and was regarding him with some wariness. "Treat that one with care, Professor Snape," he quietly ordered. "She is a rare and most precious gem."

Snape lingered for a moment, then finally spun on his heel to leave, his last words to the spectre barely audible, mixing with the cold dungeon air: "I know."

He walked quickly down a short series of dark corridors, knowing by instinct where precisely to stop and turn, and knowing by instinct that she would be waiting for him.

He all but walked into the door to his private chambers, consequently pushing her up against it with a dull thud and the rattle of the silver lock bumping between the wall.

"_Crucio_," he whispered, his breath cold on her neck. She shivered at the word. The lock slid out of its niche, and the door jarred slightly open. They entered the torchlit room, and once the door was again shut tight behind them, she moved her hands up to lace her fingers together behind his neck.

"Well?" she asked, the mischievous grin already touching her lips. He pressed his forehead to hers, closing his eyes and snaking an arm around her waist possessively. They swayed together gently, almost dancing.

"Black found him not ten minutes after you had gone. He fetched Fletcher, who fetched Dumbledore, McGonagall and myself. Black believes I tampered with Lupin's potion. How very ironic it is that the one time he is right is the one time the headmaster refuses to believe him."

Gwendolyn unclasped her hands to trail a single fingernail along the side of his neck, down to the joining of his collarbones. "Poor puppy."

"Dumbledore wants me to filter the potion's ingredients regardless, to see if I might have...made a mistake." The last three words gave him cause to grimace, as if they tasted sour to him. "Unfortunately I will have to agree with him, though the general consesus already holds that the potion was simply not strong enough. Lupin transformed, went into a rage and butchered his office, and himself, chewing off and swallowing his own tongue in his fury."

At that moment, Gwendolyn extracted the glass jar from her pocket and held it up for Snape to see. "His stomach has an awfully long reach. Either that or he expelled it -- one would think a werewolf of all creatures would know that deadly nightshade and wolfsbane do not mix well."

Severus took the jar from her fingers and turned it slowly around, examining it with a faint smile. "All the better to eat you with, my dear."

"Promise?"

He reached over and set the jar on a low endtable near the door, then focused his attention on her, his expression growing more grave. "He will be in shock for some time. A week, perhaps more. He will remember nothing. You are to be called into the headmaster's office tomorrow morning, as you were the last person to see him before he turned."

"Oh, yes, he was looking very out of sorts," she replied. "Skittish and jumpy, not well at all, even after he took the potion."

"And why was it you came to see him in the first place?"

"I'd stopped by your office to ask you about a personal matter that is best left confidential between a student and her Head of House. I was upset to find you busy with marking assignments, and so I decided to let it wait. Because you had so much work, you asked me to take the potion to Lupin. On my way there, the urgency of my needing to speak to someone about how horrible Miss Parkinson and her gaggle have been to me grew. In retrospect I'm very embarrassed about such an open display of weakness, and am glad I did not get the chance to talk to you about it, because I would hate to disappoint you by falling to pieces over so a miniscule matter as the social politics of teenagers, as I do admire you so."

"Perfect," he commended, spinning her around once before drawing her in again. "When did you leave?"

"About five minutes after I'd arrived. Lupin insisted, and what few words were exchanged between us were a comfort to me." The same grimace he'd worn before at the thought of having to admit a false mistake was now present on her features, and even Snape had to fight off a frown at the notion that the werewolf would ever be cause for his wicked angel's contentment, even if her words were insincere. His jealousy reflected in the colour of her eyes, and he realised then the full weight of what she meant to him. 

This was no mere pleasurable distraction, nor was it a simple indulgence of his core sadistic nature. He would kill to keep her with him. He had meant all he'd said to Lupin -- she was his, and he was hers, no longer to hate but still to hurt, and to now adore. This was deeper than passion and the carnal desires of the flesh that had initially drawn him to her. He found himself infatuated with her mind, and the thought of causing her pain -- emotional anguish -- did not sit well with him as it had in the introduction of their relationship. He was possessive now of more than just her body for all it did to his -- her fractured thoughts were now just as beloved, just as coveted.

What rage he had felt toward her for worming her way into his head and warping his thoughts to always lead back to her had diminished, dissipated. You can only be surrounded by the thing you hate most for so long, before you begin to love it. It is mourning the absence of what plagues you that breaks your soul. Hate's greatest triumph is convincing someone to fall in love with it. Love is not joy -- infatuation is joy. Love is heartache. Love is when the relief of happiness hurts, and you long for the pain to make a bed of your bones once more. Love makes everything hurt, and pain is the fuel that stirs the flames of hate.

Gwendolyn seemed to sense his recognition, her gaze becoming calculating and curious, darting over his face as if to memorise every characteristic of it -- as though she had not already done so thousands of times.

Slowly, she raised a trembling hand and brushed her fingertips over his eyelids, along his cheeks and lips, adding feeling to the vision. Her thumb pressed into his mouth, and he ran his tongue over the pad of it, savouring the taste of her skin.

"You will be the death of me," she said, her voice filled with certainty rather than the hopeless concession those words usually carried. She extracted her thumb and ran it over his lower lip. His eyes narrowed, and in the dim, glittering torchlight and the shadow of his brow, they looked like empty hollows in his skeletal face.

Severus dipped his head low, his lips barely grazing hers as he answered her, "No. I will be death with you."

* * *

The next morning went precisely as they'd predicted it would. Sibyll Trelawney would have been proud. Demeanours were sombre; even Fawkes the phoenix could not bring himself to sing a cheering tune. In fact, the bird did naught but quietly watch the goings-on as Dumbledore and McGonagall took turns interrogating her. Gwendolyn wanted to wring its too-long neck.

In the end, she was excused with polite thanks and a written pass to excuse her tardiness to Arithmancy, which Professor Sinistra (filling in for an absent Vector) accepted without a second glance. Out of all the teachers, the Astronomy professor seemed the most put together that day, with nary a hair out of place and as cooled and composed a character as ever. In fact, she seemed almost amused by the somewhat tenser than usual atmosphere of the class, but that could have just been the naturally pronounced arcs of her eyebrows.

"Is she a wicked person?" Gwendolyn asked that night, lying back on a table in Severus' office before she would have to depart for Astronomy.

The Potions master continued sifting and sorting the ingredients of the half-full cauldron of Wolfsbane Potion, running each through a filter as he carefully chose which to dilute and which to make seem stronger. "Professor Sinistra? Not exceptionally, no. She has no real allegiences," he replied, holding a little glass phial of some crimson liquid up to a candle's flame and frowning at it in concentration. "She is in this world to serve but one purpose: Herself. She is a amused by whatever she chooses to be, and she will always choose whatever amuses her most."

"Teaching Astronomy amuses her?"

At this, Severus shrugged. "It must, or else she would not do it. It is an admirable trait to be contented by such a small display of superiority over others. It gives one more leisure time."

"And what does she do in her leisure time?"

The dark man turned, and arched a brow at his young consort. "You are very curious about Professor Sinistra tonight," he said, and placed the red phial back into its holder. Gwendolyn tilted her head, an innocent expression dawning on her features.

"I'm a very curious person."

"Very curious, and very much a curiosity," Snape agreed, then glanced at his pocketwatch. "But I must warn you, one thing that does not amuse Professor Sinistra, nor myself, is repetitive tardiness. Be gone with you."

The girl smiled and slid boneless off the table. Severus caught her at the waist, and pulled her back up again to plant a light kiss on the top of her head. "Go," he ordered a final time, and Gwendolyn left the room slowly, but without further protest. 

_It will not do for her to stop and smell the flowers,_ he thought to himself, extracting a phial of purple liquid from its place and holding it up to the candle as he had done the other one. The firelight glinted through the glass, giving the fluid a strange, hazy hue of mixed violet, a prismatic rainbow, and a softly glinting metallic sheen, like silver.

_Something in me tells me that we have not escaped the wolf's woods just yet..._

* * *

Author's Notes: Aie. Apologies for not having updated regularly in quite some time. I am both lazy and easily distracted by new and shiny things. But thank you all for your patience. Obviously, this chapter's a bit shorter than the others, but what is to come will flow better if I start it off fresh and make it long rather than try and seperate it so that half will fit in here. Hopefully it will be out much, much faster than this one was. 


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